Tunisia appears on Italy's preliminary list of countries that could host EU-funded return centres
When EU interior ministers meet in Brussels on Tuesday 4 August, Italy's interior minister Matteo Piantedosi will put forward a plan to create EU-funded centres outside the Union where irregular migrants would be held pending removal: a model drawn from Italy's arrangement with Albania. Corriere della Sera reports that the preliminary list of possible host countries includes Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Mauritania, Rwanda, Ghana, Senegal, Uganda, Ethiopia, Uzbekistan, Armenia and Montenegro; Italian news agency Ansa carried the same list on 2 August, citing government sources. No decision has been taken, and twenty-two member states have separately written asking for tougher external borders. For Tunis, the proposal reopens the question of what role Brussels envisages for the country in European migration control, beyond the 2023 memorandum of understanding.