TUNIS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to press Tunisian leaders to step up efforts to help curb an influx of illegal migrants to her country during a visit on Friday, reports AFP. Her two-day trip, which also included a stop in Egypt, comes with Germany still reeling from several jihadist attacks, including a truck rampage by a Tunisian suspect at a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people.
Merkel’s talks with top officials including President Beji Caid Essebsi are expected to include ways to tackle years of instability exploited by people smugglers in neighbouring Libya. The visit is also a chance for Merkel to pledge support for a country often hailed as a rare success story of the Arab Spring uprisings that shook the region and toppled autocrats including longtime Tunisian dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Since its 2011 revolution, Tunisia has passed a new constitution and held free parliamentary and presidential elections.
But the nation faces high unemployment, social tensions and the threat from jihadists who have killed dozens of soldiers and police as well as civilians including 59 foreign tourists.
Merkel, who faces elections in September, is under pressure to reduce the number of asylum seekers coming to Germany, which has taken in more than one million migrants since 2015.
“There are routes for illegal immigration from Libya to Germany. We have a lot of mutual concern and interest in putting an end to this,” she said on Thursday at a press conference with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
Merkel, who will address Tunisia’s parliament, has urged the North African states to step up border controls and speed up procedures to repatriate migrants whose asylum applications are rejected.
On migration, the procedures “were very slow but they have improved recently and will continue to improve,” Germany’s ambassador to Tunisia, Andreas Reinicke, told RTCI public radio.
The Tunisian presidency told AFP that issues surrounding immigration “do not constitute a problem between the two countries... In Europe, everyone has seen that Tunisia now controls its borders much better.”
Germany has said that Tunisian bureaucratic delays meant it could not expel the Tunisian suspect in the Berlin Christmas market attack, Anis Amri, even though his asylum application had been rejected six months earlier.
Essebsi told AFP in January that Tunisia “is a country which assumes its responsibilities.”
And a Tunisian official, who did not want to be named, said that Prime Minister Youssef Chahed’s visit to Germany last month for talks had “helped appease things.”
Meanwhile, Tunisia and Germany announced a new agreement on tackling illegal migration, during a visit on Friday by Chancellor Angela Merkel, reports AFP.
The accord follows frictions between the two countries over the case of a Tunisian rejected asylum seeker blamed for a truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people.
This agreement “will satisfy Tunisia and will satisfy Germany,” Tunisian President Beji Caid Essebsi said at a joint press conference.
Merkel, on a two-day trip which also included a stop in Egypt, said Germany and Tunisia agreed on speedier repatriations for rejected asylum seekers and job training for Tunisians.