Tunisia’s Saied shakes the EU, and the Commission seem fine with it

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Welcome to EU Politics Decoded where Benjamin Fox and Eleonora Vasques bring you a round-up of the latest political news in Europe and beyond every Thursday. This edition is curated by Eleonora as Benjamin is currently on paternity leave.

Editor’s Take: Saied shakes the EU, and the Commission is totally fine with it

Tunisian President Kais Saied has sent back to the European Commission a payment of €60 million from a previously agreed deal linked to the Tunisian post-pandemic recovery.

Tensions rose on 2 October, when Saied declared the country would not accept the already agreed EU funds, which he dismissed as “for charity”.

The EU’s Enlargement and Neighbourhood Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi publicly replied that Tunisia is free to “wire back” the €60 million just transferred. And he did.

It is another step towards a hot autumn when it comes to relations between Tunisia and the EU, where the European Commission is not able to lead the negotiations and is playing second fiddle to Tunisia. Let’s see why.

“There is no alternative to ‘Team Europe’ approach,” the European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas pointed out on Tuesday (10 October) at the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) migration conference in Vienna.

He referred to the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte.

The EU-Tunisia MoU, signed in July, aims to contain people departing from Tunisia in exchange for EU money for different projects on the ground (some related to migration, others not).

The deal has since July manifested several problems of transparency and clarity in the procedures.

First, member states have been complaining in the Council since July about the memorandum because, despite broadly agreeing on its content, they did not get to read the final text and there has been a lack of due diligence in the procedures.

The ‘Team Europe’, apparently composed of the Commission, and the Dutch and Italian premiers, who signed the agreement, was challenged by many top EU politicians, including the leading members of the European Parliament.

The most common argument is that it is not clear who legitimised those leaders to be there and represent the whole Union for the deal.

In the meantime, migrants continue arriving on unsafe boats from Tunisia, occupying the front pages of EU media, particularly Italy’s island of Lampedusa, a hotspot for newly arrived migrants.

Saied can sit back and enjoy his leverage over the EU. The Commission can only say that business as usual continues despite, obviously, many things going wrong.

In the meantime, the Commission wants to conclude similar deals with other African countries, such as Egypt, and Schinas is travelling to West Africa to meet local authorities and discuss, among other things, migration.

Many governments, as well as the Commission, realise they cannot avoid dealing with third countries and want to be pragmatic.

The trouble is, the EU is also supposed to have values and stand up for human rights when dealing with these situations.

Still, the Commission is going on as if nothing was happening. What will it take for the EU to understand that the Tunisian pattern, as others have done in the past, can only bring about a great disadvantage to the Union?

Who is Electioneering

PODCAST: Polish Elections: EU and pro-democracy path at stake. With Polish citizens due to head to the polls in the country’s national election on Sunday (15 October), this week Euractiv’s Beyond the Byline podcast is exploring what is at stake in the vote.

The incumbent right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), in power since 2015, has introduced divisive reforms including massive restrictions on women’s reproductive rights and a more autonomous stance towards EU policy.

Ongoing scandals, like the visa controversy, could affect the elections, with concerns over media bias and censorship complicating the electoral atmosphere. The outcome could lead to a broad coalition government or political instability, heralding Poland’s uncertain political future.

Euractiv spoke with Aleks Szczerbiak, a politics professor and Polish specialist at the University of Sussex, and Sonia Horonziak, political scientist and coordinator of the Democracy and Civil Society Programme.

Capitals-in-brief

Economic crisis is worse than expected, says the German government. The government has downgraded its economic growth projections for the current year, signalling a deeper-than-expected economic crisis and slower recovery, according to their revised autumn forecast published on Wednesday.

Child sexual abuse material: Spanish Presidency floats limiting detection orders’ scope. A partial general approach by the Spanish Presidency, dated 10 October and seen by Euractiv, suggests limiting the scope of the detection orders in the regulation aiming to detect and remove online child sexual abuse material (CSAM).

Debt rules: French MPs oppose ‘ideological’ German position. Germany’s demand that ‘common numerical benchmarks’ be added to the EU economic governance reform is both “ideological and uncorrelated from reality”, a report by French MPs published on Wednesday (11 October) argues, calling for more transparency with national parliaments.

Inside the institutions

The return of €60 million will not impact the EU-Tunisia memorandum, Commission says. The European Commission will continue to work on the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) despite the Tunisian government returning €60 million that the EU executive sent last week. The money was not related to the MoU, but to a previous program agreed between the EU and Tunisia regarding the post-Covid-19 recovery.

EU-Tunisia deal: Vienna-based organisation to contribute to implementation. The International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) will manage projects in Tunisia under the EU-Tunisia Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), ICMPD told Euractiv in Vienna. The organisation has played a significant role in implementing a wide range of EU-funded projects and deals with third countries in the field of migration, some of which have been subject to high political pressure.

Swedish migration minister: EU should cooperate with third countries to increase returns. The EU should increase cooperation with third countries as a means to implement a more effective return policy at the continental level, the Swedish Migration Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard told Euractiv.

Three opposition movements to governments are among Sakharov Prize finalists. Women in Iran, activists in Nicaragua, and women in Poland for legal abortion are the three finalists of the European Parliament Sakharov prize, the committee of foreign affairs announced on Thursday (12 October). Established in 1988, the Sakharov Prize was named in honour of Soviet physicist and political dissident Andrei Sakharov. The first winners were anti-Apartheid activist and South African former president Nelson Mandela and Soviet dissident and author Anatoli Marchenko. In 2022, the prize was awarded to the people of Ukraine. The winner will be announced next week during the European Parliament’s plenary session.

Breton’s view of EU geopolitics in the telecom sector vis-à-vis China, US. EU Commissioner Thierry Breton supported the need to find a financing model for investment in the EU telecom sector and advocated for more control and security in its infrastructure in view of the sector’s growing geopolitical significance and competition with the US and China.

Glyphosate renewal: A ’round-up’ of how EU countries plan to vote. The European Commission has proposed to renew the approval of the contentious herbicide glyphosate for the next decade, but only if member states give their green light. So where do they sit on the issue?

What we are reading

Israelis and Palestinians are facing their moment of greatest danger since 1948, Yuval Noah Harari writes for The Guardian

India has embraced WhatsApp, but Meta now needs to make it pay, writes Chloe Cornish for the Financial Times

Why your data might already be on a Europol list, Romain Lanneau and Chloé Berthélémy write for EU Observer

The next week in politics

Busy week for the Council. Eurogroup and environment Council on Monday (16 October), economic and financial affairs Council and energy Council on Tuesday (17 October), informal meeting of trade ministers and justice and home affairs Council on Thursday and Friday (19-20 October). Eventually, the EU-US Summit on Friday (20 October).

Members of the European Parliament gathering in Strasbourg for the usual plenary session next week.

Thanks for reading. If you’d like to contact us for leaks, tips or comments, drop us a line at [email protected] / [email protected] or contact us on Twitter: @EleonorasVasques & @benfox83

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]