The EU has shown the entire MENA region that is has pots of cash to prop up the most brutal dictators to prevent migrants from reaching its shores.
What word would you use to describe the EU diverting a billion euros towards the coffers of Tunisia’s despot Kais Saied? ‘Blackmail’ seems to spring to mind. The EU, along with Italy’s right-wing leader Giorgia Meloni have just signed off close to 2 bn euros in ‘aid’ to Tunisia — in exchange for Saied to do something about the hundreds of African migrants trying to leave Tunisia’s shores in a quest to make it to Italy and then onto France before getting asylum status.
Both the EU and Italy firmly believe that the EU continent is at breaking point — not in terms of logistics or even cash that it diverts to refugees — but politically. The fallout between France and Italy over the migrants being sent over the border into French territory is bad enough; but there is a common belief that after the waves of Syrians which arrived in recent years, with many opting for Germany, that the political breaking point for both the incumbent parties and the EU itself has arrived. And so the EU does what it usually does when its policies fail and it has no other ideas. Gets the cheque book out and starts handing out cash like there’s no tomorrow.
In this instance it was Italy which acted as the prompter but ultimately what the EU has done is pay the blackmailer which is already worrying analysts who are arguing that you don’t resolve the immigration crisis by filling the bank accounts of despots who already have an abysmal track record of human rights atrocities. Saied’s case is extraordinary as he already had a reputation of being a Hitler of the North African region in that a lot of the ugly in-your-face racism against Africans which culminated with them being kicked out their homes which they paid rent for and left to sleep on the street. It was his Kristallnacht moment which shocked the world perhaps even more than the gruesome images of dead African migrants washing up on the Tunisian coastline.
Even the most ardent, staunch supporters of the EU — Carnegie — can hardly believe the stunt.
“It is the erosion of human rights combined with the rapid deterioration of the economy that is driving Tunisians to leave the country” it bellows. “Since Saied became president two years ago through what has been described as a power grab, he has silenced the opposition, quashed the media freedom, undermined the rule of law, and almost destroyed the independent judiciary. His critics are either behind bars, in internal exile, or have left the country,” it expands.
The stunt by the EU clarifies a lot though in that there is no room left for the opaque stenography journalism of Brussels hacks to dress this up anymore. The EU doesn’t give a dingo’s douchebag about human rights. It’s main obsession, which has been more and more evident under the comical leadership of Ursula von der Leyen — who some believe had relatives high up in the Nazi party during WWII — is self-preservation. Survival. It’s really that simple.
But even this strategy is short term. The three clowns who rocked up in Tunisia and staged possibly the worst fake press conference in history — aren’t even thinking about the next EU administration in 2024 and Meloni is hardly concerned with the years to come.
The numbers can only increase as Tunisia now will slowly fill with more migrants coming from Central Africa who will have to be accommodated in camps. And just how much of this EU money does Brussels actually think will end up being spent as it is intended, vs being taken by Saied and kept for his own nefarious schemes? The EU came up with a pathetic 100 million euros for border control. What does von der Leyen and Meloni think this will achieve, given that Saied even made a statement which echoed Gaddafi’s 20 years earlier that he was not going to be a border agency for the EU. Was that a hint that he might if Brussels put a zero on that figure?
What has been done in Tunisia is that the EU has shown the entire MENA region that is has pots of cash to prop up the most brutal dictators all in the name of blackmail over the migrants leaving their shores. Others will want to feed from this trough and some will no doubt even encourage the Africans to arrive in their country and to use it as a staging post. Surely now the elite in Libya will be looking at this and asking themselves how hard would it be to cut the same deal. Morocco also has a history of playing this game of allowing thousands of Africans over its flimsy border into the EU (Spain) just to remind France and Brussels every now and again what it is capable of when it feels it isn’t taken seriously. And Lebanon — possibly the most corrupt government in the entire MENA region whose entire purpose is to extract money from international agencies to fund its militias — will certainly if there are gains to assisting Syrian refuges get into boats and make the perilous journey to Greece or Cyprus.
Make no mistake. The EU, even if it longed for, it has neither the experience nor the people to invest in reform and get behind opposition groups and human rights watchdogs and so it prefers to put all its efforts into keeping the status quo in the region for its own purposes. But just how long can this craven policy go in before its own member states work out what the objectives are and revolt against Brussels? The real problem with the EU/Meloni stunt is that it relies entirely on Saied being honourable. Given that this is a man who, once elected as president, raped his own people en masse by destroying any trace of democratic institution who could him to account, the future doesn’t bode well. At least when you are held ransom by criminal gangs, negotiators are given ‘proof of life’ of their loved ones. The only guarantee with the Tunisia deal is that, like all grand EU foreign policy initiatives, it is going to fail spectacularly.
