EU Immigration and Asylum Law and Policy Droit et Politique de l'Immigration et de l'Asile de l'UE

By Paula García Andrade, Associate Professor,  Universidad Pontificia Comillas, Eleonora Frasca, Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain)

The Memorandum of Understanding between the EU and Tunisia:

Issues of procedure and substance on the informalisation of migration cooperation

On 16 July 2023, the European Union and Tunisia signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) “on a strategic and global partnership” whereby, in short, the EU engages to disburse direct budgetary support and accelerate EU funding with a view to strengthening cooperation with Tunisia in macroeconomic stability, economy and trade, renewable energies and people-to-people contacts, in exchange for Tunisia’s cooperation on migration control. In particular, Tunisia’s commitments relate to the prevention of migrant departures by sea, the fight against migrant smuggling and trafficking as well as the return of foreigners from Tunisia to their countries of origin. In turn, the EU promises to enhance Tunisian citizens’ mobility to the Member States. 

Regarding its nature, the EU-Tunisia MoU is yet another illustration of the process of informalisation of international law-making to which the EU and its Member States significantly contribute, and of the proliferation of soft law instruments particularly in the external dimension of the EU migration policy. 

It raises a series of legal issues that deserve attention. From a procedural perspective, even though the MoU is presented as a non-binding “political agreement”, a careful analysis reveals that its conclusion might have infringed the principle of institutional balance. The political nature of the agreement does not allow the European Commission to dispense with the procedural rules that must be respected when adopting non-legally binding instruments. From a substantive perspective, it seems that the MoU sits in a legal vacuum, almost as if the drafters were oblivious of previous cooperation structures between the EU and Tunisia, both formal (such as the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement) and informal (as the EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership), and of the human rights constraints of the EU external action.

• The context behind the negotiations and adoption of the MoU

According to Frontex data, since the end of 2022, Tunisia has become the first country of departure for migrants crossing the central Mediterranean, prompting the EU to prioritise strengthening the already existing migration cooperation with this North-African country. Through different cooperation projects, the EU has indeed been funding the search and rescue capacities of the Tunisian Border Coast Guard (see details here and here), and providing Tunisia with equipment, technology and technical support as well as specialised training for border surveillance (see, for instance, this project implemented from 2018 to 2024). While this cooperation takes place, serious concerns arise regarding the abuses and inhuman and degrading treatment that migrants from Sub-Saharan Africa face in Tunisia, and the corresponding human rights violations that could be attributed to its authorities (see here, here and here). 

On 27 April 2023, the EU and Tunisia expressed their “willingness to establish a stronger partnership on migration, anti-smuggling and the promotion of legal migration” after the EU Commissioner for Home Affairs travelled to Tunisia. Later, on 11 June 2023, a Joint Declaration in which the EU and Tunisia agreed to work together on a “comprehensive partnership package” was published. On 30 June 2023, the European Council endorsed “the work done on a mutually beneficial comprehensive partnership package with Tunisia”, underlining, at the same time, the importance of developing similar partnerships with other countries in the Southern neighbourhood (point 37). 

On 16 July 2023, the Commission informed that President Von der Leyen and the Italian and Dutch Prime Ministers, together with the President of Tunisia, “agreed to implement the comprehensive partnership package announced jointly on 11 June 2023” and that they “witnessed the signature” of the Memorandum by the Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement and the Tunisian Secretary of State of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Migration and Tunisians Abroad. While the signature of the MoU received high visibility as a key diplomatic achievement, it was also primarily contested. In particular, the MoU immediately encountered harsh criticism from civil society actors for the lack of human rights guarantees (on this aspect, see Pijnenburg and De Leo), but it also attracted institutional criticism, both from the European Parliament and the Member States. 

In addition to its disapproval of informalisation in the EU external action on migration (see, for all, the resolution of 19 May 2021), the Parliament, in another resolution of 16 March 2023, took a clear stance against “President Saïed’s authoritarian drift” and urged both the High Representative (HR) and the Member States “to publicly denounce the sharp deterioration of the human rights situation” in Tunisia. The Parliament also condemned “President Saïed’s racist discourse against sub-Saharan migrants and the subsequent attacks”. Given this climate, it is not surprising that, after the signature of the MoU, Members of the European Parliament addressed written questions to the Commission about the signature of the MoU, its legal basis, the role of the European Parliament, and the lack of human rights impact assessment. In September 2023, the Tunisian authorities denied a visit from a delegation of members of the European Parliament. 

As for the Member States, the HR expressed “their incomprehension regarding the Commission’s unilateral action on the conclusion of this [MoU] and concerns about some of its contents”. This unease touches upon the problem of institutional balance in the adoption of non-binding agreements, which could not be solved, in his view, by the presence of the representatives from two Member States at the signing ceremony. The foreign affairs Ministers observed that “the proper steps of the adoption procedure had not been followed” and therefore the MoU could not be “considered a valid template for future agreements”.

• The soft nature of the instrument and the procedure followed for its adoption 

With the aim of shedding light on the controversy over the procedure followed for the adoption of the EU-Tunisia MoU, it is essential to recall the rules that apply to the adoption of international commitments by the EU. For that purpose, however, the legal nature of the instrument must be first confirmed. Depending on whether the EU-Tunisia MoU can be qualified as an international treaty or a political agreement, the applicable rules slightly differ.

Legal nature of the MoU

The language of the MoU is not strictly prescriptive, as the terms used throughout the instrument do not seem to refer to legally binding obligations. Although “shall” is mostly employed – instead of “will” or “should”, which are used much limitedly through the text –, the commitments that the EU and Tunisia engage to respect are quite vague, merely containing obligations of means and not of results (“shall endeavour”, “shall seek”, “consider”, “express the intention” in the English version/ “s’emploient à”; “s’efforcent de”, “veillera à”, “marquent leur intention de” in the original French version). It is true that the text does not contain any explicit clause – usual in this kind of soft instruments – by which the parties specify that they do not intend to assume legally binding obligations under international law. It seems nevertheless clear, from the wording and scope of the commitments agreed therein and from the title used to qualify the instrument, that the parties’ intention – the decisive criterion to differentiate hard from soft law rules in international law (France v Commission II, C-233/02, para 42) – was to adopt a non-legally binding instrument. No other signs of a formal treaty can be identified as shown by its format, the lack of provisions related to its application and interpretation, or to dispute settlement mechanisms (contrary to the recently signed Italy-Albania Protocol on extraterritorial asylum management). The EU-Tunisia MoU thus appears as a further illustration of the continuous trend to resort to informal agreements to govern EU’s international cooperation on migration, as previously exemplified in the EU-Turkey Statement and the Joint Way Forward on Migration with Afghanistan, as well as in the adoption of other readmission arrangements with Bangladesh, Guinea, Ethiopia, The Gambia and Ivory Coast (on this topic, see Frasca and Roman; Molinari; Fernando Gonzalo).

Procedural rules on the adoption of non-legally binding agreements

Assuming therefore that the EU-Tunisia agreement has a soft legal nature, the rules related to the conclusion of international agreements foreseen in Article 218 TFEU were not applicable, as this provision only governs the conclusion of fully-fledged international treaties between the EU and a third country. The formal institutional safeguards of Article 218 TFEU were thus not violated in this case. However, the fact that a non-legally binding agreement has been signed does not mean that the principle of institutional balance and thus the demarcation of powers between EU institutions must not be respected, as the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) enshrined in 2002 (France v Commission II, C-233/02, para 40; see our analysis here). In the absence of any explicit rule in the Treaties concerning these instruments, the delimitation of powers between the EU institutions must be deduced from the general institutional provisions of the TEU, whose institutional balance is simply concretised in Article 218 TFEU for the conclusion of international binding agreements. 

In accordance with Article 17 TEU, the Commission holds the external representation of the EU and thus enjoys the power to negotiate, on behalf of the EU, soft agreements with international partners. This representation does not equate to the power of decision-making, which corresponds to the Council. By virtue of Article 16 TEU, the Council indeed enjoys policy-making authority and, in particular, its Foreign Affairs formation is in charge of “elaborate(ing) the Union’s external action”. It shall therefore authorise the negotiation of a soft agreement and decide as well on its signature. As the CJEU clarified in the Swiss MoU case (Council v Commission, C-660/13, paras 36-40), the power of international representation does not include the power to sign a political agreement, the Commission requiring, for that purpose, the previous consent of the Council (see Neergaard). The Court also clarified that, even if the agreement negotiated by the Commission exactly replicated the mandate given by the Council, the latter must still decide whether signing the agreement continues to respond to the EU’s interests (para 43), the signature being an act subordinated to the political discretion of the Council.

As a follow-up to this CJEU’s judgment, the Council, the Commission and the EEAS, on behalf of the HR, agreed in 2017 on the administrative procedures to ensure respect for the Council’s prerogatives. According to these arrangements, the Council must receive, sufficiently in advance, a written note from the Commission or the HR on the intention to enter into discussions of a non-binding instrument. Then, before signing it, the negotiator shall submit to the Council the draft instrument and a cover note with the details of the intended signature, at least five weeks in advance except in duly justified cases of urgency. The Council shall give its authorisation in writing, including the margin for further negotiation of the text, which means the negotiator may enjoy a certain margin to finalise the text on the spot. 

In the case at hand, the signing of the EU-Tunisia MoU took place, for the EU side, by the Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighbourhood Policy and, on behalf of Tunisia, by the Secretary of State from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Migration and Tunisians abroad. There is no formal evidence of the Council authorising the Commission to sign the MoU. Some clarifications are needed at this point regarding both the act of signature itself, and its authorisation.

On the act of signature, it is firstly important to note that the fact the Commission signed the agreement does not mean this is an administrative agreement (AG Tesauro, France v Commission I, C-327/91, para 22), simply engaging the institution as such (the European Commission) with the authorities of a third country (see Ott). On the contrary, the Commission appears clearly acting as an EU representative, since the instrument explicitly clarifies this (its title expressly refers to “the European Union, represented by the European Commission”). This is correct pursuant to Article 17 TEU, given that this institution holds the external representation of the EU in all matters covered by the Treaties with the exception of the CFSP. The MoU text mentions as parties, at every point, the EU together with Tunisia. This also discards any doubt on the eventual involvement of Member States in the authorship of the MoU (it cannot be attributed to EU Member States as the Court did wrongly with regard to the EU-Turkey Statement of 2016 in NF, T-192/16; NG, T-193/16; and NM, T-257/16, all three cases against the European Council). 

Secondly, the fact that the President of the Commission and the representatives of two Member States (the Italian and Dutch Prime Ministers) were present at the summit surrounding the signature of the MoU does not mean they took part in the instrument’s signature. It seems, according to their declarations, that they witnessed the signing ceremony and that their presence obeyed a “Team Europe spirit”, a reference made to the Team Europe approach, which combines resources and expertise from key European development actors through the coordinated action of the EU, Member States, the EIB and the EBRD, and to the Team Europe Initiatives (TEI), its flagship product, which identify critical impairments to the development of a country or region. Tunisia is covered by the Central Mediterranean Route TEI, launched in December 2022 to delve into the operationalisation of coordinated migration cooperation in a whole-of-route approach. The visits to Tunisia by Commission’s and Member States’ representatives, together with the discussions on this strategic cooperation, are therefore presented as outcomes of this Team Europe approach.

Regarding the decision to sign the instrument, this corresponds to the Council, which holds the decision-making authority in EU external relations. So, the question is whether the Council authorised the signing of this MoU. The above-mentioned declarations by Member States and the HR as President of the Council on Foreign Affairs do not appear to evidence the Council’s approval ahead of the instrument’s signature. The presence, at the summit, of the Prime Ministers of two Member States cannot, of course, hint at the provision of the Council’s consent. There are, however, clear signs of the MoU being discussed and subject to consultations with the Council (as shown in the Council’s briefing on the Foreign Affairs formation meeting of 23 June 2023, and as declared in Commissioner Várhelyi’s answer to a parliamentary question) and with the European Council too (Conclusions of 29 and 30 June 2023, para 37). There is even evidence of the inclusion of the authorisation to sign “a non-binding instrument” with Tunisia in the COREPER’s agenda for the 21st June 2023, with the alleged aim of complying with the above-mentioned arrangements on non-binding instruments. However, the item was not approved by the Committee at that meeting, as explicitly indicated in the records (Council doc. no. 10971/23, p. 1 and 21). 

All of this shows that Member States cannot claim that the negotiations and adoption of this MoU were an autonomous strategy of the Commission, of which they were not aware or whose approach they did not agree with. Nevertheless, it also appears quite clear that the Commission has decided to sign the MoU with the Tunisian authorities without the Council having formally confirmed its approval both to the signing and to the specific content of the text. If the Council had not therefore given its green light before the signature of the agreement took place (note the paradoxical contrast between the ‘formal’ requirement to authorise the ‘informal’ agreement), and the Commission proceeded all the same, the latter would have infringed the institutional demarcation of powers set in the Treaties, and thus the institutional balance applicable to the adoption of political agreements. 

A comparison with the procedure followed for the conclusion of another non-binding instrument – the EU-Tunisia MoU on a Strategic Partnership on energy (not yet signed), an outcome of the MoU we are analysing here – corroborates this interpretation. In September 2023, the Commission informed the Council of its intention to negotiate this MoU with Tunisia, and later, in October, the Council gave its “authorisation to negotiate” (Council doc. no. 12661/23). The Council specified that the Commission will keep it “informed on the progress of the negotiations and will revert to the Council at the end of the negotiations to seek [its] approval”. The clarity and firmness shown by the Council on this occasion may be a warning to the Commission, who did not follow this procedure for the signature of the MoU of 16 July 2023.

Failing to consult the European Parliament also goes against the institutional balance enshrined in the EU Treaties, since its power of political control and consultation recognised in Article 14 TEU requires, as we have defended elsewhere, its intervention in the procedure of adoption of international soft agreements. Information and reporting obligations might also be inferred from its budgetary powers, and even from an analogous application of the duty of information enshrined in Article 218.10 TFEU, which represents, as the CJEU clarified in the Tanzania case (Parliament v Council, C-263/14, paras 70-71), an element of democratic control irrespective of the formal rights of involvement of the Parliament.

As a consequence, the legality of the MoU could have been referred to the CJEU. An informal agreement constitutes, in our view, a reviewable act under the annulment action. Albeit legally binding effects are apparently lacking, the usurpation of powers of one institution over another could be considered a “legal effect” for the purpose of Article 263 TFEU, as AG Sharpston rightly claimed in the Swiss MoU Case (Opinion in case C-660/13, para 62). The deadline of two months for this legal action – as of the moment the eventual applicant may have gained knowledge about it as per Article 263 TFEU in fine, since the act was neither formally published nor notified – would have clearly been surpassed. The possibility to raise a preliminary reference on validity, which is open to “all acts of the institutions” of the EU without further requirements (Grimaldi, C-322/88, para 8), should not be however discarded, although the apparent lack of self-executing provisions of the MoU may certainly complicate the filing of legal actions before national courts and thus a subsequent referral to the CJEU.

• The content of the agreement

While the announcement of April 2023 concerned “a stronger partnership on migration, anti-smuggling and the promotion of legal migration”, the final text of the MoU’s covers fields other than migration, in particular Tunisia’s macroeconomic stability, economy and trade, green energy transition, and people-to-people contacts. The reading that the MoU is not self-executing is supported by the “10-Point Plan for Lampedusa” in which one of the “immediate actions” urged by the Commission is “to implement” the MoU through the contracting of new projects under different funding instruments (point 10). 

Since the signing of the Euro-Mediterranean Association agreement in 1995, the EU and Tunisia have established close international relations and political dialogue, Tunisia being part of the EU neighbourhood policy. Therefore, the actions envisaged in the MoU are not new, but rooted in previous forms of cooperation, including and overlapping with other informal instruments, such as the Mobility Partnership (MP) of 2014. The extension of the MoU to fields other than migration is precisely the result of negotiations by Tunisia, which successfully demanded concessions in other key cooperation areas in exchange for its efforts on migration control. 

The fact remains that the central element of the agreement is migration cooperation. The vision of migration advanced in the MoU is two-dimensional: first, there is an over-focus on irregular migration in line with the current priorities of the external dimension of the EU migration policy. In this case, irregular migration is framed as a problem of Tunisia rather than of the EU, without the required nuances on the drivers of irregular migration. Second, the EU makes promises regarding Tunisian citizens’ legal mobility to the EU, which are not, however, innovative but based on already existing initiatives. 

Irregular migration

As for irregular migration, we learn from the MoU (pp. 3 and 4) that the content of the “reinforced operational partnership against migrant smuggling and trafficking in human beings announced in April 2023” is “currently under discussion”, and that other priorities include “effective border management” and improving the “coordination of search and rescue operations at sea”, with Tunisia firmly stating that “its position is to control its own borders only”, and not those of the EU or its neighbouring countries. In other words, Tunisia does not accept to manage the EU’s borders indirectly, rejecting its role as “EU’s gatekeeper”. However, as additional financial support to the management of Tunisia’s borders is to be provided in the form of equipment, training and technical support by the EU, this point can be questioned. 

As regards the thorny issue of return and readmission, both parties agree to “further support the return and readmission from the EU of Tunisian nationals in an irregular situation, in accordance with international law, whilst respecting their dignity and acquired rights”. Forced returns of nationals to Tunisia have precisely raised several cases in front of the ECtHR (see, for instance, the landmark case Khlaifia and others v. Italy and the most recent J.A. and others v. Italy and A.B. v. Italy which concern removal from the Italian hotspots).

However, on the return and readmission of third-country nationals, the two Parties just agree to develop “a system for the identification and return of irregular migrants already present in Tunisia” – with Tunisia claiming “it is not a country of settlement for irregular migrants” – and to support their return from Tunisia “to their countries of origin in accordance with international law”. In this way, the EU openly announces the will to support a country in its domestic enforcement of the forced return of migrants to their countries of origin  through capacity-building,  and budgetary support. From a human rights perspective, this is one of the most worrying points of the MoU, because the EU will be funding a coercive state function – return and readmission – in a third country which lacks a functioning asylum system and in the absence of guarantees about protection against refoulement. The continuous reports of mass expulsion from Tunisia make the EU aware of the violations of human rights committed by the country to which it should not be complicit.

It is striking, in this regard, that both visa facilitation and readmission are not tackled in the MoU, despite the start of parallel negotiations between the EU and Tunisia in 2016. While in the Draft action plan for Tunisia of February 2022, the Commission clearly expressed a need to “relaunch negotiations on a readmission agreement and a visa facilitation agreement”, there is no reference to these negotiations in the MoU. Instead, it is suggested, after referring to the return of Tunisian nationals, that “the EU will support and facilitate the implementation of this Memorandum of Understanding also in bilateral contexts with the Member States with regard to returns and readmissions”, showing that informality appears, for the EU, as the preferred path over the negotiations of a hard law readmission agreement at supranational level. This point also testifies to a long-standing issue in the EU readmission policy, that of the inclusion, in the negotiations of EU agreements of obligations regarding third-country nationals who have transited through the partner country before entering the territory of Member States. Many African countries oppose the inclusion of this clause in EU readmission agreements, which makes negotiations stagnate (on this topic, see Abderrahim). This seems to be precisely a stumbling block in EU-Tunisia negotiations and the critical difference between the EU-Turkey statement and the EU-Tunisia MoU. Tunisia did not agree to readmit third-country nationals who have transited through Tunisia before entering the EU, as Turkey did however with Syrians. Instead, Tunisia only agreed to return, with EU financial assistance, migrants irregularly present on the Tunisian territory to their respective countries of origin, indirectly safeguarding the interest of the EU to prevent their migration to the EU.

Legal mobility

As for Tunisian nationals’ mobility, the MoU states that the parties “agree to work towards the implementation of a Talent Partnership to promote legal migration”. Since their announcement in the New Pact on Migration and Asylum, no Talent Partnerships have been concluded so far with any third country (for a discussion, see Sarolea and Farcy; and García Andrade on this blog). The Commission has recently proposed a regulation “establishing an EU Talent Pool” which is meant to support the implementation of Talent Partnerships. In the meantime, the precursors of Talent Partnerships are several EU-funded pilot projects on legal migration under the “Mobility Partnership Facility”, run by ICMPD, and other projects, such as “Match – Hiring African Talents” (2020-2023) and “THAMM – Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa” (2018-2023). Tunisia is one of the countries involved in these projects, although with minimal results (see here and here). The MoU also proposes the “implementation of the 2016 joint youth partnership and other EU programmes in the fields of research, education, culture and youth, including skills development and mobility”. Finally, facilitating Tunisian mobility to the EU also requires better visa harmonisation, which the EU commits to reinforce under the Local Schengen Cooperation, and facilitate “the granting of visas, by reducing delays, costs and administrative procedures”, without however referring to the negotiations of a visa facilitation agreement for that purpose. The interdependence between the negotiations of a readmission agreement and a visa facilitation agreement and the unpopularity of readmission agreements in third countries make Tunisia’s demands in the area of visas, as crystalized in the MoU, more realistic in this regard, but also more practical and concrete. There is, indeed, evidence of the tightening of the conditions for obtaining a visa for Tunisian citizens due to the informal practices put in place by some EU Member States.

Relations with the Mobility Partnership and the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement

Overall, if one compares the EU-Tunisia MoU of 2023 to the EU-Tunisia Mobility Partnership (MP) of 2014, one would be surprised at the radically different ways the texts were drafted, both formally and in substance. Formally, the MoU seems to have been drafted overnight, without much care as compared to the MP. MPs have been criticised for their controversial legal nature, the objectives truly pursued through their implementation and their numerous limitations, such as the endorsement by a few Member States (see Cassarino). However, they are partially informed, at least on paper, by a rights-based approach. On the contrary, not only has the Commission not carried out a human rights impact assessment before signing the MoU (as the European Ombudsman remarked), but in the MoU the needs and rights of international protection seekers, victims of trafficking, children or unaccompanied minors in Tunisia are wholly bypassed, despite the parties’ worthless claim of developing “a holistic approach to migration” based on the “respect for human rights” (p. 3). As noted by Pijnenburg, “there is no concrete indication regarding safeguards to protect the human rights of people on the move, nor does the MoU envisage any human rights monitoring mechanism”.

In his remarks on the EU-Tunisia MoU given at the plenary session of the European Parliament on 12 September 2023, Commissioner Várhelyi affirmed that “the respect for human rights and democratic principles is enshrined in the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement which is the overarching legal framework for the relations” between the EU and Tunisia. He added that “the objective is to hold the EU-Tunisia Association Council by the end of the year [2023] to tackle many aspects of the bilateral partnership” and to endorse “the new EU-Tunisia Strategic Priorities that are being prepared in parallel to the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding”.

One might wonder why the MoU has been concluded “in parallel” to (if not away from) formal structures of cooperation and why the drafters of the MoU seem oblivious of any pre-existing legal framework binding the Union and Tunisia, including the above-mentioned negotiations of formal international agreements (see here for details). The institutional context should not be disconnected from signing an agreement – albeit non-binding – stipulated at such a high level and with weighty budgetary implications for the Union. Even more so, in the past, the EU-Tunisia Association Council has been the preferred forum to advance bilateral relations (see the 2018-2020 EU-Tunisia strategic priorities), a path that could have been used at this occasion too in order to implement the provisions of the EU-Tunisia Association Agreement (in particular, art. 69 on social dialogue), although its political visibility would be certainly lower.

Conclusion

For a long time, the more the political bargaining on the progress of EU migration policy stagnated in the internal dimension, the more solutions were sought externally (as we have argued here). In this case, the EU-Tunisia MoU could clearly be seen as an external solution for the EU, especially for Italy, although the controversies raised by its adoption might have contributed to exacerbating the internal divide among Member States on the migration dossier and may also complicate the MoU’s implementation. Concluding an informal agreement in the rush, without reaching a broad consensus on its form and content, might determine the agreement’s ineffectiveness. Doing it furthermore without respecting the EU institutional balance and rule of law also undermines the fundamental principles that should be guiding the conduct of EU external relations. However, contestation has not been just internal to the EU, a series of declarations from the President of Tunisia and the return of 60 million in EU funding suggests a rethink by the Tunisian government as well (see here and here). Disagreement could, nonetheless, be overcome, since, on 20 December 2023, the EU and Tunisia agreed upon an implementing measure of the MoU consisting of a 150 million EUR programme to support the Tunisian economy. 

In 2016, after the signature of the EU-Turkey Statement, the European Commission affirmed that “its elements can inspire cooperation with other key third countries and point to the key levers to be activated” (p. 3). In the State of the Union speech of 2023, after signing the EU-Tunisia MoU, President Von der Leyen declared that “we now want to work on similar agreements with other countries”. The next target appears to be Egypt, a country in which claims of human rights abuses against migrants also exist. Similar critical issues are thus likely to recur if the EU persists on this strategy. In the short-term, offering money in exchange for people control could seem effective in preventing irregular arrivals, but it bears high costs in term of human rights protection. In the long-term, it weakens the ability of the EU to cooperate credibly with third countries and runs against global efforts to foster rules-based multilateral approaches to migration.