EU seeks to block migration route through deal with Tunisia

The European Union has reached a political agreement with Tunisia’s anti-migrant president Kais Saied that offers economic support in exchange for co-operation to choke off a key migration route across the Mediterranean Sea.

The memorandum of understanding offers financial support for Tunisia’s struggling economy, study and work opportunities for talented Tunisians, and the development of green energy production linked to the EU through an undersea interconnector.

The EU is to provide €105 million this year to fund border management and anti-smuggling efforts, providing eight boats and drones to Tunisia’s coastguard and navy, while paying for 6,000 migrants within Tunisia to be voluntarily repatriated back to their origin countries, according to a senior EU official. In turn, Tunisia has promised to accept back its own citizens who are expelled from the EU.

European governments have pinned their hopes on such cooperation as they face domestic pressure to reduce irregular migration into the EU, and the deal is seen as a potential model for future agreements with other points of departure such as Egypt and Morocco.

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“Migration is a significant element of the package that we have signed today,” Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said as the agreement was reached.

“For humanitarian reasons it is vital that we work together ... to stop people making the dangerous and often deadly Mediterranean crossing as they attempt to reach the EU’s shores. It is essential to gain more control over irregular migration.”

The EU has faced criticism for supporting the coastguard of neighbouring Libya as it is accused of pervasive human rights abuses, and the deal comes as president Saied pursues hardline migration policies at home.

After dismantling much of Tunisia’s democratic advances since the Arab Spring and assuming sweeping powers, president Saied has turned to anti-migrant rhetoric as the country struggles with an economic crisis, warning the public of a plot to replace Tunisia’s Arab and Muslim population with Black Africans in a version of the “great replacement” theory.

Human rights organisations have blamed this rhetoric for fuelling violence against Tunisia’s Black population, and earlier this month Human Rights Watch said Tunisian security forces rounded up hundreds of Black Africans and dumped them in a no man’s land outside the country’s border, where some were said to have died.

Mr Saied took aim at non-governmental organisations as he welcomed the agreement at the signing ceremony.

“The Tunisian people provided for all of these displaced migrants anything they could expect, with full hospitality, with unlimited generosity, while so many other humanitarian organisations that should have played their role in the proper way didn’t want to act,” Mr Saied said.

“This is in addition to the fake news and the distorted news in order to disparage the Tunisian people and the Tunisian country,” he continued.

“We are in utmost need of an agreement about inhuman migration and about the displacements that are masterminded by some criminal networks.”

An EU official said that the agreement would be implemented through legal contracts that would set down respect for human rights as a condition for receiving funds.