Transactionally Yours: The EU and Tunisia Confront Their Own Contradictions

October 29-30, 2024, will mark the resumption of negotiations between Tunisia and the European Union, represented by the Directorate-General for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG Near, managing the Tunisia dossier and holding the purse strings) and the European External Action Service (EEAS, responsible for policy direction). This meeting in Tunis, the first during Kaïs Saïed’s second term, aims to discuss the details of implementing the migration memorandum signed on July 16, 2023.

To better grasp the stakes of this meeting, it is crucial to demystify the narratives underlying EU-Tunisia relations. On one side, the EU justifies its transactional strategy as an effort to stabilize Tunisia and prevent it from pivoting toward geopolitical adversaries like Russia and China (implicitly due to a lack of European cooperation). On the other, Tunisian President Kaïs Saïed portrays himself to supporters as a staunch defender of national sovereignty, publicly rejecting the role of Europe’s “coastguard” while discreetly cooperating at a minimal level with European entities like Frontex to stop migrants from heading to Europe, rescue them at sea, and facilitate their repatriation.

However, this limited cooperation does not satisfy the Europeans, who are desperately seeking to intensify collaboration by proposing the establishment of readmission hubs with their partners. A growing idea is the creation of dedicated return centers outside the Schengen area, in third countries. For the EU27, the objective is clear: accelerate deportations at any cost, with little regard for ethical concerns. This tightening of readmission mechanisms reflects Europe’s frenzy to strengthen its migration policies, increasingly outsourcing management to partner countries like Tunisia, now central to this strategy.

In Tunisia’s current context, marked by a severe economic crisis, this initiative could represent an opportunity to replenish the country’s desperately empty state coffers. The critical question is: how far can Kaïs Saïed maintain his sovereignty rhetoric in the face of European demands? Will he be forced to accept transactional compromises to save the country’s economy? This question is even more pressing for the Europeans as it arises against the backdrop of recent failures in British and Italian projects to outsource asylum-seeker management to Rwanda and Albania, respectively.

Nevertheless, this transactional approach carries significant risks. By supporting an increasingly authoritarian regime, the EU risks complicity in human rights abuses intensifying under Saïed’s presidency, thereby undermining its own legitimacy as a defender of democratic values.

Faced with an authoritarian drift in Tunisia, the EU treads an increasingly unsustainable tightrope, oscillating between a minimal facade of respect for democratic principles and the need to maintain functional relations with a key partner in security and migration management. This precarious stance is further strained by investigations, such as those by The Guardian, alleging severe abuses by EU-funded Tunisian security forces, including sexual violence and flagrant human rights violations against migrants (officially denied by Tunisia). Pressure is mounting for Brussels to account for its knowledge of these abuses and outline corrective measures, even as EU funds continue to support this repressive regime. Moreover, DG Near reportedly anticipated such abuses in an internal note that was later buried.

Transactionally Yours: A Bluffing Game

Ultimately, the fate of these negotiations will depend on Kaïs Saïed’s ability to balance his political ambitions with Tunisia’s immediate needs, particularly securing direct budgetary support and an EU loan without IMF conditions, as promised by Giorgia Meloni. Having already accepted the role of Europe’s border guard during the Memorandum’s signing in July 2023, Saïed is likely to go even further this time, buying time to secure financial relief while advancing his rapprochement with the BRICS, particularly Russia. Migration, the sole remaining link between Saïed and a Europe he constantly criticizes, once again becomes the linchpin of a compromise, muting his anti-Western rhetoric and defiance of perceived diktats.

Meanwhile, Europe, consumed by the urgency of migration challenges, seems ready to abandon a core pillar of the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which initiated development cooperation, and current treaties such as the Treaty on European Union (Article 21) and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (Article 208). These treaties define principles aimed at reducing poverty and promoting sustainable development. The cooperation budget is now redirected toward a securitized and repressive day-to-day management of migration. This philosophical shift is aptly summarized by a tweet from French Minister for European Affairs Benjamin Haddad on October 24, 2024: “Time for realism. Europe must stop seeing itself as a vast market or an NGO defending universal values and instead think of itself as a political entity with its own economic and security interests.”

However, reducing Europe solely to economic and security realism forgets that its strength lies in the balance between market, security, and universal values. If Europe abandons its defense of human rights and solidarity principles, it will lose not only its soul but also the influence that allows it to build partnerships based on trust and respect. Viewing Europe merely as a cold political entity risks a reductive vision, distancing it from what has made it successful and differentiates it from countries like Putin’s Russia.

Ultimately, these negotiations resemble a high-stakes poker game where both sides strategically advance their interests, concealing true intentions behind official statements. Europe, fixated on managing migration and driven by pressure amplified by far-right parties exploiting the issue for political gain, and Tunisia, economically strangled, are engaged in a game where pragmatic interests outweigh declared principles. Alarmist rhetoric about migrants primarily serves domestic political objectives, distracting from real issues and reinforcing a transactional approach at the expense of democratic values and human rights. Behind the facade of cooperation, power dynamics and economic survival dictate the actions of both parties, far from the proclaimed ideals of sovereignty and democratic values.

This article was posted and translated by Ahmed Lagha but was originally written by Maxence Vanhille for the Tunisian digital newspaper Business News in French.