Bilateral relations, including in the energy and investment sector, management of migration flows, negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. These are the main dossiers that the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, will return to discuss during her official visit to Tunis. The issues, already discussed last Friday in the phone call between the Prime Minister and the President of the Tunisian Republic Kais Saied, will be explored during the conversation between the two which will take place before lunch at the Presidential Palace in Carthage.
As LaPresse reports, the Italian government is following the situation in the North African country with particular attention, so much so that Meloni also raised the case on the occasion of the G7 meeting in Hiroshima after having met face to face with both the director general of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, and with the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. For the premier, Tunisia “is a nation that is currently in difficulty because technically it risks a financial default and clearly if the Tunisian government were to fall we could experience an absolutely worrying scenario”, she admitted during the interview given to “Quarta Repubblica” on Rete4 on the eve of the mission. The reference is obviously to the “migration issue”, at a time when, Meloni recalled, Italy is already having to deal with “a situation that is objectively the worst that has ever occurred, due to the situation Africa lives as a whole but also for everything that is happening in Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, the food crisis, Libya and Tunisia, which is in a very delicate situation”. And that if it were to get worse it would cause many problems for Italy. On the other hand, as recently recalled by Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi, «Since the beginning of the year, Tunisia has detained at least 20,000 people with targeted control activities on the coast and on the mainland. It is a country that is playing an important role in curbing traffickers and limiting departures”. This is why Meloni at the Japanese G7 returned to the negotiations between the IMF and Tunisia which was effectively blocked.
“There is a certain rigidity of the IMF in the face of the fact that all the guarantees that would be necessary have not been obtained from President Saied – explained the premier – It is understandable on the one hand, on the other we are sure that this rigidity is the way improve? If this government goes home, do we know what the alternatives might be? I believe that the approach must be pragmatic, because otherwise we risk worsening situations that are already compromised». And in Friday’s phone call with Meloni, Saied also addressed the issue of migrants by proposing to hold a high-level conference between all the countries concerned, namely the countries of North Africa, the Sahel and the Sahara and the countries of the northern Mediterranean, “to address the causes of irregular migration and put an end to these inhumane conditions”.
