The European Union and Tunisia have signed a migration agreement with which the North African country will stop migrants in exchange for hundreds of millions in financial support. After weeks of difficult negotiations, the agreement was signed in the capital Tunis on Sunday. The agreements should lead to fewer migrant boats reaching Europe via Tunisia.
The signing of the new agreement took place on Sunday under the watchful eye of outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte, his Italian colleague Giorgia Meloni and President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen. The three traveled to Tunisia for the second time in just over a month on Sunday to seal the agreements.
A migration agreement with Tunisia is seen in the EU as a crucial step in reducing the number of migrants. Tunisia is one of the main transit countries from which migrants depart to reach Europe. About half of the migrants who arrived in Italy by boat this year departed from the North African country.
At the same time, there was already fierce criticism of the negotiations from human rights organizations. Tunisian President Kais Saied has recently emerged as an increasingly autocratic leader, who has dismantled the fledgling Tunisian democracy step by step. There are also great concerns about the position of migrants in the country. Earlier this year, a speech by Saied in which he spoke of a “repopulation plan” incited manhunts, especially for black migrants.
The signing of the agreement this Sunday was preceded by difficult negotiations in recent weeks. At the beginning of June, the trio also traveled to Tunis and it was actually expected that an agreement would be finalized before the end of the month. There has been some frustration in Brussels recently about how those talks went, not least because of the unpredictable actions of President Saied himself.
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