France and Italy share a vision of the emergency of the situation in Tunisia (...) pending progress with the IMF,» French President Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday. The French President was speaking at the Elysee Palace in a joint statement with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. The coordination and good work between France and Italy must continue, he said. «We must work better with the countries of transit and of origin to stop the incoming flows», said the French President. He added that there was a shared desire to develop a more "ambitious" Mediterranean policy to strengthen the links between the two shores in terms of culture, climate, biodiversity and energy, but also in terms of migration policy and the economy. On migration, «we must be able to organize the matter more effectively asylum and immigration, while remaining faithful to our values. This is the policy we've been trying to implement for the last six years (...) we now need to strengthen it, and that's the whole point of the Tunisian initiative I just mentioned.» The French President also said «we want to strengthen control of our external borders (...) there is no good European migration policy if there is not a coherent policy to defend our common borders». We must find the right balance between responsibility and solidarity between all countries For Giorgia Meloni, the partnership with the Mediterranean and especially with the countries of North Africa is "essential". «We cannot continue to allow slavery in the third millennium, the network of traffickers of human lives must be crushed,» she pointed out. Meloni also said «we must therefore work together to help African countries to develop, to benefit from their resources and to offer opportunities to their children.» She added "We are working together on Tunisia, I am pleased to be able to do so, even with the full involvement of the European Union.» On her recent visit to Tunisia, in the company of Ursula Von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, and the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, Meloni said that this eminently European visit testified to Europe's desire to find a solution for a country that is currently experiencing a difficult economic situation. "That's why, pragmatically and very seriously, we believe that we can all work together to find solutions for Tunisia,» she said in conclusion.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse