"We are very satisfied with the joint declaration of the European Union (EU) with Tunisia adopted today. This is an important first step towards creating a true partnership with the EU that can address the migration crisis but also development for both sides of the Mediterranean in an integrated way," said Italy's Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the end of the joint meeting held on Sunday in Carthage, with President Kais Saied, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte. "We have an important opportunity to seize until the European Council's meeting at the end of this month. We must all continue to work hard to achieve a memorandum between Europe and Tunisia that can lay the foundation of a new page in the history between Europe and Tunisia," she pointed out. "We are ready to host an international conference on migration and development in Rome that we talked about with President Saied, as a further step in this journey that we have undertaken together and of course we consider this work useful also to help Tunisia in its negotiations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for the framework agreement that remains a priority for the stability and the growth for the country," she indicated.

Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse