The European Commission has been accused of “bankrolling dictators” by senior MEPs who have claimed that the €150m it gave to Tunisia last year in a migration and development deal has ended up directly in the president’s hands.
A group of MEPs on the human rights, justice and foreign affairs committees at the European parliament launched a scathing attack on the executive in Brussels, expressing anxiety over reports that the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, was about to seal a similar deal with Egypt.
The Greek migration minister, Dimitris Kairidis, confirmed late on Wednesday that a joint declaration between the EU and Egypt had been agreed and would be formally unveiled when von der Leyen and the leaders of Greece, Italy and Belgium visit Cairo on Sunday.
The agreement sees Egypt receiving an aid package of €7.4bn (£6.3bn) “mostly in loans” in return for the country “committing to work harder on migration”, he told the Guardian, adding: “I have said, time and again to my colleagues, that we need to support Egypt which has been so helpful in managing migration and so important for the stability of North Africa and the wider Middle East.”
Kairidis, who held talks with the Egyptian ambassador to Greece on Wednesday, confirmed there had been no boats leaving directly from Egypt, even if arrivals on southern Greek islands of migrants travelling through Libya had soared this year. “Egypt is not only hosting 9 million refugees, it has been very effective in controlling illegal migration,” he said.
The MEPs have accused the commission of refusing to answer questions on the deal with Tunisia and worry that it is looking at a series of “ad hoc” deals with other African countries without regard to democracy and rule of law in those countries.
“It seems that we are bankrolling dictators across the region. And that is not the Europe that we want to see. That is not the place which the EU should be holding in the world,” said the French MEP Mounir Satouri, a member of the parliamentary foreign affairs committee.
At a press conference in Strasbourg, he claimed the money – pledged to Tunisia last year as part of a wider pact aimed at curbing a surge in migration to Italy and people-smuggling – had been diverted, saying that the €150m was supposed to have been invested directly in an EU-agreed project but instead had been “transferred to the president directly”.
Fellow MEPs said there had been an “authoritarian shift” in Tunisia under its president, Kais Saied, but the commissioners had gone ahead with the deal anyway.
A spokesperson for the EU commission said MEPs were entitled to express their views but that it was better to build partnerships to improve democracy and human rights than to “break off relations” and see the situation deteriorate.
“What I can say is that we are absolutely convinced of the necessity to work with countries in our neighbourhood, taking into account the realities on the ground,” the spokesperson said. “We know the criticism related to human rights in those countries, and it is obvious that this is an issue and that these are issues that we take up with those countries.”
The spokesperson added there were “specific mechanisms in place to discuss human rights with the countries in the region, including Egypt”.
The Danish MEP Karen Melchior, coordinator of the justice committee, said parliamentarians’ concerns about the Tunisia deal were “being continually ignored” and that commissioners refused to answer their questions or take their concerns seriously.
“How can we continue to have a memorandum of understanding, how can we give budget support without conditionality to Tunisia, when things are going from bad to worse?” she said.
“To sign an agreement with President Saied, who is continuing to suppress opposition and democracy in Tunisia – this is not the way the EU should be acting. This is not the way that Team Europe should be doing our foreign policy.”
The chair of the human rights committee, Udo Bullman, attacked what he said was a “hush-hush” deal that had been rushed through.
“The commission has to explain why there was so much urgency in the agreement of last summer – why it, hush-hush, very quickly before Christmas, [said] it was of the ‘highest urgency’ and just gave the money … without any critical debate,” he said, adding this was a question for the EU’s commissioner for neighbourhood and enlargement, Olivér Várhelyi, and for von der Leyen.
Michael Gahler, the German CDU MEP who was blocked from visiting Tunisia by the local authorities last year, said the Tunisian people should not be abandoned in the face of “Saied’s autocratic rule” and economic decline.
“That requires us to make sure that European taxpayers’ money truly benefits the Tunisian people and the civil society … and why it has to be clear that European funding to Tunisia needs to be adequately conditioned to that end,” he said.
The concerns are being voiced this week as the EU parliament’s five-year mandate draws to a close before elections in June, with MEPs keen to lay down red lines for any future deals the executive in Brussels intends to do.
Sara Prestianni, the advocacy director for the NGO EuroMed Rights, said she was concerned the EU was about to make a similar “strategic and political” mistake with Cairo, pledging vast sums of money without setting conditions involving enough financial oversight or guarantees on human rights. “It would be an error, particularly if it [the Tunisia deal] is replicated with Egypt,” she said.
Satouri, who is also the parliament’s special rapporteur for Egypt, said: “We need to ensure democratic procedures are followed before money is disbursed. These are not the private fund of Commissioner Várhelyi. These are European funds.”
