Tunisia
Decree 2026-148 of 23 July, published in the official gazette, finally brings into force the "honour loan" scheme created by the 2024 cheque-reform law (article 412 ter of the commercial code): every bank must set aside at least 8 percent of the previous year's net profit for loans carrying no interest, no collateral and no arrangement fee: up to 5,000 dinars for individuals, 10,000 for small projects and 25,000 for SMEs and community enterprises, with up to six months' grace before repayment begins (readings of the text differ on the maximum maturity it allows). Banks have ten banking days to answer an application and must give reasons for any refusal. The state neither funds the scheme nor compensates lenders, leaving open who absorbs the defaults: the objection raised the moment the text appeared.
On 28 July the Bourse de Tunis triggered the circuit breaker set out in article 3.7 of its trading rules, suspending quotation for an hour after the Tunindex dropped more than 3 percent; a second threshold at minus 5 percent would close the session outright. The exchange's communiqué gave no cause, but the fall came days after the decree obliging banks to devote 8 percent of profits to interest-free loans, and it hit the very bank stocks that had carried the index to a record 21,552.73 points on 17 July. Economist Ridha Chkoundali warned that squeezed bank profitability matters well beyond the market: banks are the main buyers of the Treasury bills that finance the state budget. Other readings differ: Challenges TN treats the drop as a technical consolidation after a rally of roughly 60 percent since January, with listed companies' fundamentals intact.
Deputies passed bill 49/2026 on 28 July by 58 votes to 13 with 9 abstentions, approving the state guarantee on a 110-million-euro EBRD loan (371 million dinars) plus a 7-million-euro grant to the Compagnie des phosphates de Gafsa, for mining and haulage equipment and a high-pressure filtration unit to reuse process water; the loan runs ten years with three years' grace. The chamber then moved on to guarantees for murabaha facilities from the Islamic Trade Finance Corporation for the state chemical group. Phosphate output has averaged 3.2 to 3.4 million tonnes a year over the past decade against roughly 8.2 million before 2011, and reviving the sector is one of the few levers Tunisia has to earn hard currency without new market borrowing.
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Webdo · Tuesday, 28 July 2026
The two presidents spoke on 28 July, according to readouts issued by both presidencies. The Tunisian account foregrounds Saied's declaration that "Egypt's security is an integral part of Arab national security", his description of the war in Gaza as a genocide, his insistence that any Libyan settlement be "Libyan-Libyan", and a renewed invitation for Sisi to visit Tunisia. The Egyptian account instead emphasises congratulations on the 69th anniversary of the Republic, 70 years of diplomatic relations, an offer of help with Tunisia's wildfires, and warnings about regional escalation. The gap between the two readouts is itself informative: Cairo is the partner Tunis reaches for on Libya, and neither side made any concrete commitment public.
Geopolitics
Iran fired multiple ballistic missiles at US forces in the Middle East on Tuesday, at a base in Jordan according to a US official cited by Axios, in what Washington called an attempted surprise attack; Centcom says every missile was intercepted. The United States and Saudi Arabia answered with joint strikes in Iraq that killed at least 20 members of the Popular Mobilisation Forces, an Iraqi state security service Iran has infiltrated, and Washington warned that further attacks on American troops or Saudi energy infrastructure would trigger retaliation. On Wednesday the Revolutionary Guards said they had halted three tankers sailing an illegal route in the Strait of Hormuz, and Brent crude rose to around $88 a barrel.
Soldiers and emergency workers spent Wednesday searching collapsed houses and a badly damaged shopping centre for trapped survivors, a day after the magnitude 7.1 earthquake in the Kumamoto area on the southern main island of Kyushu. At least 18 people have been killed, including one foreign national, and at least 62 injured, six of them seriously, according to the prefectural government; the tallies have been rising steadily. At the Aeon mall some 3,000 customers were evacuated before a gas explosion in another part of the building, the second floor collapsed, and four deaths have been confirmed at the site while three people are missing.
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NPR · Wednesday, 29 July 2026
Fujimori was sworn in on Tuesday after winning June's presidential runoff by a margin of fewer than 50,000 votes, becoming Peru's ninth president in a decade. Her Popular Force party and its main ally Popular Renovation will hold half the senate seats once the new legislature is installed, making it harder for opposing legislators to remove her: of Peru's presidents over the past decade only three were elected by popular vote, the rest taking office after resignations or removals by congress. She is the daughter of Alberto Fujimori, who stabilised the economy in the 1990s but was later imprisoned for human rights abuses committed under his rule.
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NPR · Tuesday, 28 July 2026
Europe
Three firefighters have died tackling blazes on Crete and in the south of the Greek mainland, the Greek fire department said, as the summer's fourth heatwave makes fires harder to quell and raises the risk of stabilised areas reigniting. In Spain, interior minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska called the country's largest recorded wildfire, west of Madrid, "technically stabilised", while prime minister Pedro Sanchez said the next twelve hours would be decisive; it was the first time in Spanish history that a fire had been raised to "operational level 3", putting the national government in charge of the response. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Romania and Greece are extending their missions and Poland joins from Saturday, after the EU sent France seven aircraft and four helicopters from countries as far away as Sweden and Turkey.
Italy has reserved 14.9 billion euros under the EU's SAFE loan programme but has still not signed the loan agreement. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Tuesday that Rome would request the full amount, then retracted: the 14.9 billion is only a ceiling, how much is actually drawn will be decided at the end of the year and will probably be less, six to nine billion. Seventeen member states have finalised their loans and the Commission's defence spokesperson Thomas Regnier says there is no time to lose; while Rome delays, the roughly 10 billion euros that could be freed cannot be reallocated to countries such as Poland and Lithuania, which asked for more than they were granted.
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Euronews · Wednesday, 29 July 2026
BMW has begun a voluntary redundancy programme agreed with its works council that could cover as many as 8,000 jobs in administration and development in Germany, according to reports; production is excluded. The company points to the technological transformation of the industry, geopolitical uncertainty, changing market conditions and developments in China, where domestic manufacturers have taken over the electric-vehicle market and launched a price war in what used to be a lucrative export market for European brands. The move follows Volkswagen's plan to shed up to 100,000 of its 650,000 staff and Porsche's total of 9,000 redundancies by 2035.