MEPs accuse EU executive of ‘bankrolling dictators’, claiming Tunisia’s president pocketed EU aid

Senior members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have accused the EU executive of “bankrolling dictators”, claiming that the €150 million it gave to Tunisia last year in a migration and development deal went straight to the country’s president, Kais Saied.
The group of MEPs on the human rights, justice and foreign affairs committees at the European Parliament say that the €150 million has ended up directly in the president’s pockets instead of being invested in an EU-backed project. They launched this scathing attack on the European Commission, while expressing concerns over reports that the EU executive’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, was about to seal a similar deal with Egypt. The MEPs have accused the EU executive of refusing to be more transparent about the deal with Tunisia, expressing concerns that it is considering entering into more “ad hoc” deals with other African countries without regard to democracy and rule of law in those countries.
“It seems that we are bankrolling dictators across the region. And that is not the Europe that we want to see,” the French MEP Mounir Satouri has said. “That is not the place which the EU should be holding in the world.” Fellow MEPs stressed that the general view is that there had been an “authoritarian shift” in Tunisia under its president, Kais Saied, but the EU executive had gone ahead with the deal anyway. “To sign an agreement with President Saied, who is continuing to suppress opposition and democracy in Tunisia — this is not the way the EU should be acting. This is not the way that Team Europe should be doing our foreign policy,” said Danish MEP Karen Melchior. An EU commission’s spokesperson rejected these claims, saying that while the MEPs were entitled to express their views, it was still better to build partnerships than to “break off relations” and see the human rights situation deteriorate.