Grande-Marlaska focuses its visit to Tunisia on the Libyan war and the CETI in Melilla

Early this Friday morning, the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, arrived at Tunis airport to hold a bilateral meeting with his counterpart, Taoufik Charfeddine, and Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi.

The fight against terrorism in the Sahel, the war in Libya, the fight against the mafias engaged in smuggling and illegal migration, and the situation of the 700 Tunisian irregular migrants at the CETI in Melilla, for whom an agreement is being negotiated, are the focus of the Spanish minister's visit.

Around 700 Tunisians are trapped in the Centre for Temporary Stay of Migrants (CETI) in Melilla, at risk of being expelled.

The situation has been harshly criticised by civil society and in particular by the influential Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) for which they are "an instrument of pressure to impose an agreement that will allow them to carry out mass expulsions as Italy does".

"The various governments that have succeeded each other since 2011 have shown themselves to be fragile in the face of European pressure, especially with regard to the migration issue," the NGO warns. For more than a year, families have been demonstrating regularly in front of the Spanish Embassy in Tunisia to ask the Spanish government and denounce what they define as inhumane conditions of overcrowding, especially dangerous in times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The matter was discussed by the minister of foreign affairs, Arancha González Laya, during her meeting in September with the president of the Tunisian Republic, Kais Saied, who called for a "solution within a comprehensive solution to the problem of migration". "I am convinced that we are all absolutely sympathetic and united by an interest that is to fight against criminal organisations of all kinds, in this case those that do it with human beings," said Grande-Marlaska, who admitted that an agreement is being worked out with Tunisia in this respect.

According to figures from the Tunisian National Institute of Statistics, some 3,500 Tunisians reached Europe in 2019 while 1,300 perished along the way. That year, Spain became the destination for Tunisian migrants in 2019, but this year it was Italy that received the most.

Marlaska's visit coincided with the announcement of the dismantling of a presumed Tunisian human trafficking network operating on the border with Algeria, a mountainous area where several Jihadist groups linked to the Daesh organisation operate in the area.

"Also with two very important matters: against the financing of terrorism, an important matter, and also against radicalisation", stated Grande-Marlaska upon landing.

"These joint policies between partners are very important for preventing radicalisation as a determining element in the fight against terrorism. And to deepen the relationship, both in the bilateral framework and in the multilateral framework of the European Union. Concrete programmes already exist and it is a matter of pooling experience," he added.