Meloni in Tunis to stop the landings of migrants, the possible turning point – Corriere.it

With today’s visit to Tunis by Giorgia Meloni, the agreement on migration policies towards Europe could mark a turning point. Although the Tunisian president Kais Saied is not new to last-minute program changes, the prepared memorandum would in fact pave the way not only for agreements on migrants but also for strong energy cooperation, also accelerating cultural exchanges between Tunisians and Europeans. The situation regarding landings in Italy is getting worse day by day: from January to today, according to the Viminale, 75,065 migrants arrived on our shores, against 24,624 in 2021 and 31,920 in 2022. In July of this year alone, landfalls traveled at rates of 600-1,000 per day.

In the palace of Carthage, together with the Prime Minister the president of the EU Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the Dutch premier Mark Rutte are expected today, who, together with Saied, have made an appointment to sign a document which provides for the allocation, immediately, of 150 million by Brussels euros to support the Tunisian budget and 105 million to support border control. On this last point, Saied would like more. In recent days, the local authorities have increased communications on the relocations carried out. And, meeting the National Security Council a few hours after the arrival of the Europe team, Saied announced an all-out fight against traffickers. Words that supported the priority objective that the EU sees in the agreement: to stop the flows arriving from the Sahel region already on the African coasts.

Von Der Leyen, Meloni and Rutte had already been to Tunisia on 11 June, but after that it was deadlocked. a month off. The triad had agreed with the North African country on a joint declaration that would have served as a prequel to the memorandum. Saied had assured the three leaders they would do their best to sign before a late June leaders’ summit. So it was not. Indeed, departures from the city of Sfax have started to increase again and, thanks to Libyan instability, in Brussels the fear of a summer wave of flows has become growing. Tunisian NGOs had returned to denounce forced deportations of migrants to Sfax. The images of the conditions in which the sub-Saharans were living in the Tunisian coastal city had returned to bouncing on European social networks. The EU’s position that management must always be carried out in compliance with international law and human rights, the Commission assured when announcing the trip on Sunday.

However, the Tunisian president will have to wait to obtain the 900 million euro tranche of funding from the EU. The Commission will not move until the stalemate between the IMF and Saied is resolved, with the former asking for adequate reforms before paying the 1.9 billion loan and the latter having raised a trench against the diktats of the Monetary Fund. The shore of Tunisia is crucial for the EU. The Frontex agency has estimated that in the last two months arrivals from the central Mediterranean have increased by 140%, setting a new record after 2017.

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