EU External Partners: Commission planning overhaul of funding to Tunisia following abuse revelations ― Commission signs € 3 billion agreement with Jordan ― Tunisian MPs scrutinising draft deportation law ― More doubts over possible impacts of EU funding to Libya ― Record number of deportations from Algeria to Niger ― NGOs urge caution over Europol agreement with Egypt | European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE)

The European Commission (EC) is planning to overhaul its funding to Tunisia in response to revelations of abuses committed by EU-funded security forces.
The EC has signed a € 3 billion agreement with Jordan.
The Tunisian parliament is deliberating a draft law that would allow the deportation of people on the move from Tunisia to their countries of origin.
The EC has admitted that a contractor who was recruited to undertake rights monitoring in Libya only reports on “potential risks” of EU-funded projects violating the ‘Do no harm’ principle rather than any actual violations.
An NGO has estimated that at least 31,404 people were deported from Algeria to Niger in 2024.
A group of NGOs has raised concerns about a planned agreement between the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and Egypt.

The European Commission (EC) is planning to overhaul its funding to Tunisia in response to revelations of abuses committed by EU-funded security forces. In September 2024, the Guardian newspaper reported that Tunisian security forces had committed numerous acts of violence, including sexual violence, against people on the move in the country. On 24 January, it reported that EC officials were drawing up “concrete” conditions to ensure that future EU funding to Tunisia would go ahead “only if human rights have not been violated”. According to an EC spokesperson, the change represented a “re-dynamisation” of the EU’s partnership with Tunisia. The spokesperson also stated that a series of subcommittees would be set up in the coming months to ensure that human rights would be central to it. Commenting on the latest Guardian report, the director of Human Rights Watch’s EU office, Philippe Dam, welcomed the EC’s commitment to put human rights at the centre of its engagement with Tunisia and made the following recommendations for its implementation: “No EU funding to entities engaged in violations; Concrete rights conditions; and Independent assessments and monitoring for all migration funds”.

The EC has signed a € 3 billion agreement with Jordan. According to a statement issued by EC President Ursula von der Leyen following the signature of the ‘EU-Jordan Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership’ on 29 January, it will enable the EU and Jordan to “strengthen their co-operation on border management, the fight against smuggling and human trafficking” and “enhance co-operation on durable solutions for refugees, including complementary pathways for protection and safe, voluntary and dignified returns, also in co-operation with international agencies”. Commenting on the agreement, Commissioner for the Mediterranean, Dubravka Šuica, who signed on behalf of the EU, said: “This strategic and comprehensive partnership will increase security, stability and economic opportunities for Jordan and the EU, directly benefitting our citizens”.

The Tunisian parliament is deliberating a draft law that would allow the deportation of people on the move from Tunisia to their countries of origin. It follows the government’s claim that 7,250 people were “voluntarily repatriated” in 2024. According to the New Arab news website, the draft law sets out a legal framework for deportations which includes exemptions for people who may be at risk of suffering torture or inhumane treatment in their home countries and the possibility for people to appeal deportation orders in administrative courts. The New Arab reported that the Tunisian Observatory for Human Rights had denounced the proposal as “unethical and contradictory” and that it had accused the Tunisian government of using the draft law as a “backdoor to formalise its ongoing practice of forced deportations”. The Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights (FTDES) was equally scathing in its assessment of the draft law. “This law is just populism dressed up as policy,” said FTDES spokesperson Ramadan Ben Omar.

The EC has admitted that a contractor who was recruited to undertake rights monitoring in Libya only reports on “potential risks” of EU-funded projects violating the ‘Do no harm’ principle rather than any actual violations. According to EUobserver, in April 2022, a senior EC official said that the contractor that it had hired to monitor its projects in Libya “didn’t report any violations of the do-no-harm principle directly related to all costs by our trust fund programmes”. However, on 17 January, the EC wrote to EUobserver to clarify that the contractor’s reports “do not provide ‘evidence’ that violations of the ‘do no harm’ principle have occurred”. Although the revelation that the contractors reports actually only highlight “potential risks” of violations does not prove that EU-funded equipment is being used by the Libyan authorities in a way that violates the ‘Do no harm’ principle, it seems to imply that the EC is not fully informed on this issue. This conclusion was reflected in a European Court of Auditors’ (ECA) report on the implementation of the EU Trust Fund for Africa that was published in September 2024. “Commission staff with no in-depth knowledge of the activities funded by the EUTF in Libya, in particular their location, cannot link the highlighted risks to EUTF projects and cannot assess whether EU funded equipment is being used as intended and in line with the do-no-harm principle,” the ECA found.

An NGO has estimated that at least 31,404 people were deported from Algeria to Niger in 2024. According to Alarme Phone Sahara, this figure represented a 21% increase from the previous year (26,031) and an all-time record. The organisation has stated that the high number of deportations in 2024 can be partly explained by “increased co-operation between the Maghreb countries, which aims to make it more difficult for people from Niger to arrive and continue their journey, and to deport people on a large scale”. “Since 2023, there has been an increased in chain deportations, in which people are deported in Tunisia, often after sea pullbacks, to the Algerian border, and then by the Algerian security forces to the Niger border,” it added. Alarme Phone Sahara strongly condemned the Algerian government’s “ruthless” deportation policy and the “inhuman and sometimes fatal conditions” in which the people concerned have been deported.

A group of NGOs has raised concerns about a planned agreement between the EU Agency for Law Enforcement Cooperation (Europol) and Egypt. In an open letter to Commissioner for Home Affairs and Migration Magnus Brunner dated 16 January, 29 organisations wrote that the proposed “working agreement” would “risk serving to legitimise the Egyptian police as a legitimate and reliable co-operation partner for the European Union, despite well-documented involvement in human rights violations and enforcing dictatorial rule in the country”. They also restated concerns about the possibility that Egypt’s recently adopted asylum law would “likely contravene international human rights and refugee law while overlooking crucial protection concerns for refugees and asylum seekers” and suggested that the exchange of intelligence and strategic information (but not personal data) that would be facilitated by the planned agreement would risk “facilitating and/or whitewashing further human rights violations in Egypt and in the EU (notably at its borders)”. The signatories also asked the EC to provide details of any “human rights or data protection due diligence” that it had conducted in advance of and/or during the ongoing negotiations.

Related articles