Tunisia, Germany strike new immigration deal
TUNIS: German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced a new agreement with Tunisia on tackling illegal migration during a visit Friday, following tensions over the case of the Tunisian suspect in the Berlin market attack.
Merkel, on a two-day trip to North Africa that also included a stop in Egypt, said Germany and Tunisia had agreed on faster repatriations for rejected asylum seekers and job training for Tunisians.
The German leader, who faces elections in September, is under pressure to reduce the number of asylum seekers coming to her country, which has taken in more than one million migrants since 2015.
Merkel, who also addressed Tunisia’s parliament, has urged North African states to step up border controls and expedite procedures to repatriate migrants whose asylum applications are rejected.
Germany has said Tunisian bureaucratic delays meant it could not expel Anis Amri, the suspect in the truck rampage at a Berlin Christmas market that killed 12 people, even though his asylum application had been rejected six months earlier.
Merkel said the two countries had agreed that questions from Germany on the identities of Tunisian asylum seekers will be answered within 30 days.
“We will also help Tunisia to set up a registration system. Replacement passports are then meant to be issued within one week,” she said at a joint news conference with President Beji Caid Essebsi.
This agreement “will satisfy Tunisia and will satisfy Germany”, Essebsi said, adding that it concerned about 1,500 Tunisians whose residency requests have been turned down by Germany.
“Measures will be taken in the Tunisian consulates in Germany to help in their identification,” he added.
Merkel’s talks also covered ways to respond to years of instability exploited by people smugglers in neighbouring Libya, where winter departures on perilous boat crossings to Europe have spiked.
“We know the political situation in Libya is difficult,” she said, welcoming Tunisia’s efforts to help resolve the turmoil.
“No-one is more interested in political stability in Libya than its neighbours, but I’ll say, because of the migration issue, it’s also important for us Europeans.”
The migrants issue had already been contentious in Germany where sexual assaults by large groups of mostly North African men on New Year’s Eve 201516 against women in Cologne provoked outrage.
Merkel’s interior minister floated an idea for North African countries to build holding centres for returned migrants, but it was rejected by Merkel’s centre-left coalition partners and rights groups.
The visit was 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. — AFP
We will also help Tunisia to set up a registration system. Replacement passports are then meant to be issued within one week. — Angela Merkel, German Chancellor