“Tunisia is only responsible for its own borders,” President Kaïs Saïed said Wednesday, June 14, after a telephone interview with Charles Michel, President of the European Council. This statement comes following the visit made the previous Sunday to Tunis by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, accompanied by the President of the Italian Council, Giorgia Meloni, and the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte.
During this visit, the second in the country for the Italian leader in less than five days, the question of an agreement between the European Union (EU) and Tunisia on the control of migratory flows towards Europe was raised. . The Commission has announced the release of 105 million euros to fight against smugglers, invest in coast guard equipment or facilitate repatriation procedures.
If Tunis has officially collaborated with Rome since 2011 to allow the repatriation of irregular Tunisian migrants, the new EU pact is likely to impose on it the readmission of migrants who have only transited there. The possibility of returning asylum seekers to a “safe third country” is provided for in the agreement reached on June 8, under pressure from Italy, between the interior ministers of the 27 EU member states , under the “Pact on Migration and Asylum”.
The “dictates” of the IMF
Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that a memorandum of understanding between Tunisia and the EU should be signed before the end of the month to be discussed at the next European Council, scheduled for June 29 and 30, without the content of the negotiations has not been communicated. “Tunisia refuses to be a country of transit or a place of settlement,” Kaïs Saïed retorted on Wednesday, saying that “the phenomenon of migration can only be tackled by eliminating the causes and not by limiting ourselves to treatment. consequences “.
Among the announcements made by the President of the Commission, 900 million euros in financial assistance should be released on the condition that Tunisia manages to reach an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a loan of 1.9 billion dollars (1.75 billion euros). The execution of this agreement, recorded since October 2022, has been postponed following Kaïs Saïed’s refusal to comply with the “dictates” imposed by the financial institution.
“The Bretton Woods agreements are not inevitable and the diktats [of the IMF] are not acceptable, because if they were applied as they were in 1984, they would threaten social peace,” he said. reiterated during his interview with Charles Michel (according to the press release issued by the Tunisian presidency), in reference to the bread revolts which broke out in January 1984 following an agreement with the IMF to increase the price of bread and products grain growers.
Death rather than “almsgiving”
Visiting the mining basin of Gafsa (center-west) the day before, the Tunisian president considered that it was better to “die rather than ask alms from foreigners”, trying to convince demonstrators to end their protest movement and to allow the resumption of phosphate production, a sector which has been slowed down since 2011 when it represented nearly 10% of exports. “There is no sura that bears the name of the Monetary Fund,” he told dozens of job seekers gathered around him.
In addition to phosphate production and to avoid the removal of subsidies on commodities and hydrocarbons, Kaïs Saïed proposed in early June to “take excess money from the rich and give it to the poor”, quoting attributed to one of the first caliphs of Islam, Omar Ibn Al-Khattab. “Instead of lifting subsidies in the name of rationalization, it would be possible to introduce additional taxes to those who benefit from them without them needing them,” he added.
Heavily indebted to the tune of 80% of its GDP and plagued by galloping inflation (10% on average since the start of the year and more than 30% for certain food products), Tunisia is struggling to find the financing necessary to meet its budget deficit in the absence of an agreement with the IMF. The downgrading, on Friday, by the American rating agency Fitch Ratings of Tunisia’s rating from CCC to CCC – (high risk of default), only reinforced fears about the country’s financial health and, potentially, on its social balances.
