Kais Said: Tunisia will not be ‘Europe’s border guard’

The Tunisian president Kais Saied has said his country will not be Europe’s border guard, hours before a meeting on migration with the European Commission president and the Italian and Dutch prime ministers.

Ursula von der Leyen, Giorgia Meloni and Mark Rutte will offer financial assistance to Tunisia when they visit the country on Sunday, including a pledge to try to unblock an International Monetary Fund rescue package.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, will fly to Washington next week to try to convince the IMF to release the first tranche of a $1.9bn (£1.5bn) bailout loan.

Kais Saied made it clear, however, said Europe’s migration crisis should not be for his country to deal with.

“The solution will not be at the expense of Tunisia … we cannot be a guard for their countries,” the president said during a visit to the port city of Sfax, the main departure point for migrants seeking to reach Italy by boat.

Italy is pushing for a Turkey-style partnership deal with Tunisia that would allow Rome to deport migrants who do not qualify for asylum to the country, which has taken over from Libya as one of the main sources of people smuggling.

Meloni won major concessions from EU interior ministers on Thursday in a new migration and asylum pact that will allow returns to transition countries even if the person concerned had only been there for days or weeks.

Italy, Greece and other Mediterranean and central European countries, including Hungary and Austria, fear a major increase in migration numbers this summer with radical reforms to laws not likely to be passed by the European parliament until later this year.

After seven years of stalled talks, interior ministers decided to agree to Italy’s demands to water down a proposed rule that would have obliged EU member states to prove a substantial connection such as family or a five-year work history before a deportation could be sanctioned.

Just under a million irregular migrants made it to Europe last year, of whom about 120,000 were deemed ineligible for asylum.

Sunday’s visit to Tunisia will be the second in a week for Meloni who was swept to power on the back of pledges to crack down on irregular migration.

It also comes after Thursday’s meeting in Rome with the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, after which Meloni said the agenda has included “defending the external borders” and “fighting the routes used by people smugglers”.

Italian special forces stormed a Turkish cargo ship en route to France on Friday after an alleged attempted hijack by a group of migrants who had managed to get on board.

The credit ratings agency Fitch downgraded Tunisian debt deeper into “junk” territory on Friday, underscoring the possibility of the country defaulting, which in turn prompted a collapse in state finances that could cause widespread hardship.

An IMF rescue package has been stalled for months because Saied has rejected the economic reforms needed to unlock the bailout package.

Donor countries have been pushing him to change tack, and Italy has urged the IMF to finalise the loan.

Perilous Mediterranean crossings soared after Saied announced a crackdown on sub-Saharan migrants in February, using language the African Union denounced as racialised.

The EU signed a deal with Turkey in 2016 backed by €6bn (£5.1bn) to provide facilities for 4 million refugees, including 3.5 million Syrians.