The EU's Immigration Strategy:
Europe's Far Right Project to Fund Northern Africa Human Rights Abuse and Small Dictators
The EU's immigration policy has emerged as a notable political success for far-right leaders like Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Viktor Orban in Hungary. This approach has granted them influence over the EU's immigration strategy, shaping the direction of the policy.
The strategy involves allocating substantial financial resources to Northern African countries, despite their concerning human rights records and widespread corruption issues. This move should put anyone with a sense of decency in a moral panic. It is hard to imagine these funds doing much more than bankrolling these corrupt state apparatuses and unavoidably promoting the serial violation of human right particularly against those least capable of defending themselves. Yet, these programs are bound to be very popular among the bases of these various reactionary forces across the continent.
Among the countries receiving such funds, Tunisia stands out as a particularly troubling example. The massive amount of 1 billion euros earmarked for Tunisia has sparked criticism, especially given the country's dismal human rights record, which has been worsening under an increasingly authoritarian government. The arrangement ought to prompt comparisons to last decade’s EU-funded camps in Erdogan's Turkey, making Tunisia's case considerably more alarming.
A more forthcoming stance by the far-right leaders would involve demanding the imposition of European administrative authorities to oversee the use of funds and ensure transparency and accountability in their allocation. Needless to say, a forthcoming demand of colonial oversight remains unlikely and this means leaving concerns over the potential misuse of funds and lack of proper oversight unanswered.