On Friday 15 September, the European Ombudsman, Emily O’Reilly, asked the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to explain how the Commission will ensure respect for human rights under the agreement between the EU and Tunisia, sealed in July and already marred by implementation problems.
“Did the Commission carry out a human rights impact assessment of the MoU before its conclusion and consider possible measures to mitigate risks of human rights violations?” asked the Ombudsman, who opened an enquiry.
“As you are aware, concerns have been raised about the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the EU and Tunisia, which was signed by the Commission on 16 July 2023. [...] These concerns cover the ‘Migration and mobility’ section of the MoU and the actions that are expected to result from this. As I found in my decision concerning the EU-Turkey Statement and other agreements with non-EU countries, there should be a prior and explicit evaluation of the human rights impact of relevant policies and actions, ideally before these actions start and policies are adopted, for obvious reasons”, the Ombudsman explains.
When questioned on the subject on 15 September, the Commission, which had received the letter, said that to date no money had been released to Tunisia, whose authorities had also refused entry to the country to a delegation from the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee (see EUROPE 13250/15).
Link to the letter: https://aeur.eu/f/8le (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)