Tunisia
Journalist and columnist Haythem El Mekki said on Wednesday July 15 that the Sfax Court of Appeal had overturned a first-instance dismissal and sentenced him to one year in prison, in a case opened in Sfax in January 2024 after a social-media post about conditions inside the Habib Bourguiba university hospital. He said the prosecution began under Decree-Law 54 but that the conviction was ultimately handed down under Article 86 of the Telecommunications Code, and that this is the second of three proceedings brought against him since 2023. The SNJT journalists' union said it was deeply worried, denounced the systematic use of custodial penal statutes against opinion on matters of public interest instead of the guarantees of press-specific Decree-Law 115, and said it would back a cassation appeal.
Business News reports that the appeal chamber of the Tunis Court of First Instance sentenced lawyer and political activist Abdennaceur Aouini to one year in prison over an old dispute with a fellow lawyer, Hamadi Baccar; people close to him say the complainant had withdrawn the complaint during the proceedings and that the first instance had dismissed the case. The defence committee for Chokri Belaid and Mohamed Brahmi, of which Aouini is a member, calls the ruling political retaliation for his criticism of how the judiciary works, citing his remarks at the bar's consultative general assembly on May 1 and his part in the regional lawyers' strike in Tunis on May 19. Accounts differ on the date and the court: Business News dates the ruling to July 16 before the first-instance appeal chamber, while the defence committee dates it to July 15 before the correctional chamber of the Tunis Court of Appeal.
In a joint statement released by Human Rights Watch on July 16, three years to the day after the EU-Tunisia memorandum of understanding was signed on July 16, 2023, 46 human rights and humanitarian organisations call on the EU and its member states to publicly denounce violations in Tunisia and stop funding abusive migration control. The statement says the EU and member states have provided 105 million euros for interceptions at sea and border-control activities in Tunisia, of which at least 65 million is already contracted to train and equip bodies including the Tunisian coast guard and the maritime rescue coordination centre. The signatories cite documented arbitrary detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and collective expulsions to neighbouring countries, and note that UNHCR's asylum and refugee-status work in Tunisia has been suspended since June 2024.
According to the country-by-country annex to the foreign trade note the Institut National de la Statistique published on July 12, Tunisian imports from Italy reached 5.547 billion dinars in the first half of 2026, up 13.7 percent year on year, giving Italy 11.7 percent of all imports, ahead of France on 11.5 percent and behind only China on 12.3 percent. Exports to Italy grew more slowly, 5.5 percent to 5.880 billion dinars, so Tunisia's bilateral surplus shrank from nearly 699 million dinars a year earlier to about 333 million. The EU still takes 70.4 percent of Tunisian exports and supplies 44.9 percent of imports, and the INS attributes the widening overall trade deficit mainly to energy.