The migration pact that the EU and Tunisia concluded in the summer is “slowly starting to come into force”, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner (ÖVP) said today during a three-day trip to the North African country. Austria will help train border guards.
According to Frontex, 1,652 people left Tunisia for Europe in October; in September there were 16,396, Karner said. In the previous year, Austria recorded 13,126 asylum requests from Tunisia. After the visa exemption was abolished in November 2022, this year there are 348.
The beginning didn’t go well
The beginning of the migration agreement did not go well. Several EU institutions criticized the deal, which stipulated that the EU Commission could pay financial aid worth up to 900 million euros to the hardest-hit country economically.
Tunis itself returned 60 million euros in budget aid in October, and Interior Minister Kamel Feki said: “Under no circumstances can Tunisia serve as a border guard for other countries.”
Karner is seeing early results
Shortly after the agreement was announced, there was a kind of “final panic”, but the agreement is already giving its first results, Karner emphasized. “It is important that we support Tunisia when it comes to border protection; they can count on our support.” Cooperation with Tunisia is going well, Karner said after a meeting with Feki.