When in 2017 the Gentiloni government signed the controversial memorandum with the Libyalandings recorded the first significant reduction in the summer, going from over 23,000 in June to 3,920 in August. This is the challenge at the heart of the memorandum of understanding just signed by the European Union with the Tunisian Republic, which our government was already claiming on the eve of its signing, assuring that “we are doing the naval blockade with the agreement with Tunisia” . An agreement reached thanks to the commitment of the Italian premier Giorgia Meloniwho returned to Tunis for the third time in a few weeks alongside the president of the EU Commission Ursula Von del Leyen and to the outgoing Dutch premier Mark Rutte. The Union undertakes to support Tunisia’s economic growth also by strengthening trade cooperation between the EU and the North African country. The counterpart is the contrast to the departures of migrants which in 2023 exceeded those from Libya, with Italy which has just now reached the threshold of 80.000 Arrivals since the beginning of the year, against 33,548 for the whole of 2022. But on border control, the Tunisian president Kais Saied he kept the point, confirming his intention of wanting to oversee “only his own”. And so that of “not being a country of settlement for irregular migrants”, reports the EU Commission in the press release on the agreement. As for the migrants who have already entered Italy, Tunis agrees to repatriate only his countrymen. A question of money, largely still tied up, and of numbers, those of landings. As for people and rights, beyond the proclamations of “respect for human rights” there is nothing. And after thousands of sub-Saharan people have been deported to desert areas on the borders with Libya and Algeria in recent weeks, attacks on the memorandum and accusations against the European Union of endorsing the behavior of Tunis are multiplying.
The agreement is there, but the details don’t exactly seem like an “objective achieved”, as Meloni says. Meanwhile, European money is not already all on the table. THE 150 million certain data in order to relaunch the economy of a country still at risk of default will still have to be approved by all 27 in the EU Council. While the bulk 900 million eurosremains tied to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund still on the high seas because Saied does not accept the reforms it entails. For sure there are the 105 million for the chapter “migration and mobility”, but it is certainly not a question of transforming Tunisia into the famous third country to which not only the Tunisians but also the other migrants who set sail from its shores are sent back. In fact, Saied agrees to repatriate only his fellow citizens. A clause already present in the bilateral agreements in force between Rome and Tunis and today even less significant given that this year the Tunisians are only 5 mila on the more than 40,000 migrants who landed and departed from Tunisia. Europe has other wishes and at the European Council of 9 June the 27 pushed to include in the future EU pact on immigration and asylum the possibility of resettling illegal immigrants in third countries considered safe, even if they are not the ones of origin. The model is the agreement with the Türkiye, but Saied does not seem available: “We will not be the collection center for irregular migrants rejected by the European Union”, he reiterated several times. For non-Tunisian migrants, therefore, the memorandum is limited to the announcement of “a system for the identification and repatriation of irregular migrants already present in the country to their countries of origin”. Terms of a “strengthened operational partnership” against the smuggling of migrants announced in April but still under discussion. At the moment there are only 15 million euros on the table, out of the total 105 allocated by the EU for the migration issue, to be allocated to around 6 thousand voluntary repatriations of people already present in Tunisia thanks to the collaboration of United Nations agencies. A rather small number even if compared to the 10,000 migrants stopped by the Tunisian coast guard in less than three months, from January 1st to March 20th, and not counting the approximately 25,000 who managed to reach Italy in the same period.
However, what really matters to the Commission and above all to Italy is Tunisia’s ability to block departures, as Libya did at the time of the memorandum of the then interior minister Marco Minniti. For this they will be delivered to Tunis 17 boats and 8 ships to be launched in pursuit of the punts. The current Minister of the Interior, Matteo Piantedosi, before signing the agreement, he said that “we are doing the naval blockade with Tunisia in agreement”. We will have to wait for the numbers, but if in Libya the trafficking of human beings has always been in the hands of the militias, including those directly in the hands of members of the Government of National Unity of Tripoli, in Tunisia the flows move in a decidedly more fragmented way, with smuggling networks that are smaller and more difficult to control. After the uprising of the residents against the sub-Saharans a Sfax, Tunisia’s second city and main port of departure for migrants to Italy, the authorities have deported hundreds of people, even across the borders to Libya and Algeria. But according to what was declared by the migrants who landed in Italy in the last few days, the departures have already been reorganized and we also set sail from Boughrara, Chebba, Madhia and Sidi Mansour. For this reason it is not obvious that the EU money in Tunis will have the same result as the agreement signed by Italy with Libya. Furthermore, the enlargement of the Tunisian fleet does not mean the obligation to operate beyond its territorial waters, given that Tunisia does not have a SAR zone (search and rescue) officially recognized which requires collaboration with the other coastal states of the central Mediterranean in rescue operations.
Last but not least, the question of human rights in a country that Europe continues to consider safe where, however, the condition of foreigners is increasingly at risk. Saied himself has repeatedly stated that he wants to oppose the “ethnic replacement” of Tunisia at the hands of a “conspiracy” that seeks the Africanization of the country. And the recent deportations of sub-Saharan people, abandoned by the hundreds, without water or food, in the desert areas on the border with Libya and Tunisia, do not bode well. Doubts about the deal have been raised since European Council while the office of Amnesty International he declared to the European institutions that the agreement “will lead to a dangerous proliferation of already bankrupt migration policies and will signal the acceptance by the European Union of an increasingly repressive behavior by the president and the government of Tunis”. In short, according to Amnesty “the agreement with Tunisia makes the European Union complicit in violations of the human rights of asylum seekers”. Even in Tunis, where in recent months civil society organizations had already opposed the memorandum asking for transparency on the terms of the agreement, the NGO Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights announced “a militant summit entitled “Meeting of peoples against inhumane European migration policies and in solidarity with migrants”, scheduled in the capital on July 20 and 21, just on the eve of the meeting on immigration organized by the Italian government to The July 23 in Rome. The counter-summit in Tunis will bring together organizations, trade unions and movements from Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Niger, Mali and Europe. “As political leaders gather in Rome to further restrict the right of movement, expel migrants, violate refugee rights and legitimize neocolonial policies for the peoples of the global South, we meet in Tunis for humanity, dignity, freedom and for the rights of all”, writes the Tunisian NGO in the statement.