The European Commission president and the prime ministers of Italy and the Netherlands will visit Tunisia over the weekend to unblock IMF loans for the North African state.
Tunisia and the IMF have been negotiating a $1.9 billion loan for months, but President Kais Saied has refused to commit to reforms openly.
Without the funding, Tunisia could suffer a financial crisis that could send more migrants over the Mediterranean Sea to Europe.
On Thursday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said she hoped the Sunday trip would help Tunis and the IMF settle.
“The destabilisation of Tunisia would have serious repercussions on the stability of the whole of North Africa… and those repercussions would also reach us,” Meloni said after meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Rome.
Meloni, von der Leyen, and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will visit Tunis. Rutte’s biggest domestic political issue is Dutch displeasure with migrant seekers.
Meloni and President Saied met in Tunisia this week before the trip.
In 2021, Saied dissolved parliament and took power by decree. He ordered security forces to deport all illegal immigrants in February, claiming a plot to make Tunisia more African and less Arab.
The crackdown drove migrants to Italy. According to UN data, 26,555 of the 51,215 boat migrants who entered Italy this year sailed from Tunisia, compared to 3,658 in 2022.
