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00:00 For more on this story, we can go across to France 24's Dave Keating standing by in Brussels.
00:04 Dave, good afternoon to you. On what grounds did Tunisian authorities bar this EU delegation from
00:09 entering the country? And what's the response been?
00:12 Well, we have had a response from this delegation from the European Parliament's
00:20 Foreign Affairs Committee. They've asked for an explanation from the Tunisian authorities,
00:26 because the letter that was sent by the Tunisian government to the EU embassy in Tunis
00:31 doesn't really specify the reason why they are blocking the MEPs from coming in. At least it's
00:37 unclear. Now, in their statement, the Foreign Affairs Committee says this conduct is unprecedented
00:43 since the democratic revolution in 2011. So this was supposed to be a group of five MEPs from
00:49 different political parties led by German MEP Michael Gaylor. They were coming in, they say
00:56 that they were trying to have meetings with the Tunisian government, but they were rebuffed.
01:00 And so they were instead meeting with civil society, people on the ground. And that meeting
01:06 was supposed to take place today. Now, the timing of this rejection may have something to do with a
01:11 debate that happened in the European Parliament on Tuesday in Strasbourg. It was a fiery debate,
01:17 specifically about this deal that was struck in July between the European Union and Tunisia
01:24 to pay Tunisia 700 million euros in exchange for stopping boats going across the Mediterranean,
01:32 using Tunisia as a disembarkation point. And that has been incredibly controversial. A lot of MEPs
01:40 on the left were heavily criticizing the deal and heavily criticizing the regime of Tunisian
01:46 President Kayy Saïd, which he has been accused of human rights violations, rule of law dismantling,
01:52 not just for his own Tunisian citizens, but also for the sub-Saharan Africans who are increasingly
01:58 using Tunisia as a departure point to go into the European Union. Some of the MEPs that were due to
02:04 go on the trip also had a press conference in July after that deal was struck, criticizing it.
02:09 That deal was struck when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the far right
02:14 Prime Minister of Italy, Giorgio Maloney, went over to Tunisia, met with Saïd, was seen as giving
02:21 his regime the kind of blessing of the European Union, some respectability. It's come in for a
02:27 lot of criticism and this latest incident will probably only increase that criticism.
02:33 Yesterday, Dave, the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen gave her State of the
02:39 European Union address and one of the things she spoke about in order to fix the migration
02:45 problem within the EU is to go after trafficking networks. But that seems to be only a part of the
02:50 problem, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, this has the potential to be politically embarrassing for
02:58 President von der Leyen. In yesterday's State of the Union speech to the European Parliament, she
03:04 heralded the Tunisian deal as something that was helping fix what she called Europe's broken
03:11 migration system, implying that the deal should be repeated with other countries.
03:17 So this action by the Tunisian government would seem to lend credence to the critics of that deal
03:23 who say that the Tunisian government doesn't adhere to the rule of law and doesn't adhere
03:27 to democratic norms. But this has been a hugely controversial subject because a lot of the
03:33 impetus right now is to stop the boats from coming from North Africa. And that does mean
03:38 entering into these deals with countries like Libya, countries like Tunisia,
03:46 in Europe. Now, during the speech yesterday by President von der Leyen, she did hit migration
03:52 pretty hard. This has been a pretty big theme with her centre-right political party, the European
03:57 People's Party. And we do have the EU elections coming up next June. And we are definitely going
04:03 into campaign season here. This issue of migration is a very, very intense one. The centre-rights,
04:10 of which Ursula von der Leyen is a part, is really placing this at the centre of their campaigning
04:16 so far. So it'll be interesting to see if we get more incidents like this from the Tunisian
04:23 government and from other governments in North Africa, how the left, how MEPs on the centre-left
04:28 will respond to that. Dave, thank you very much for that. Dave Keating reporting for us from Brussels.