Italy’s Premier Giorgia Meloni to start official visit to Tunisia on Tuesday

Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni will start today Tuesday an official visit to Tunisia, the office of Tunisia’s leader Kais Saied announced Monday.
“Italy’s Prime Minister to pay a friendly working visit to Tunisia, Tuesday, June 6”, it said in a statement.
The office did not provide details on the visit but it follows a telephone conversation both leaders had last Friday on several topics including illegal immigration. Rome is very concerned about waves of illegal migrants including Tunisians departing from the coasts of the North African country for Europe’s shores, mainly Italy.
The European country inked in April a deal with Tunisia to recruit 4,000 Tunisian workers, as the two countries move to spur regular migration. The future recruits will be trained in Tunisia before deployment in the European country. The recruitment program dubbed “Decreto flussi” is an Italian government law that sets how many non-European citizens can enter Italy for work.
The program will help promote regular migration at the expense of illegal migration. Two Italian diplomatic sources on condition of anonymity told “Zawya” that Meloni is also travelling to make progress in unblocking loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Tunisia.
The North African country is facing an economic and financial crisis – result of the pandemic – has turned to IMF for a $1.9 billion loan, but talks have stalled over Tunisian authorities’ refusal of conditions that they believe are crossing redlines.
Italy believes that should the talks fail, it will furthermore take the brunt of the illegal migration.
A government source, “Zawya” reported, in Rome, said Italy wanted to start unblocking part of the international financing to Tunisia in exchange for progressive reforms, in an effort to swiftly improve the economic situation of the country.