In early April, Tunisia reached the dark milestone of mass show trials, marking its steady return to authoritarianism. Thirty-seven journalists, authors, businessmen and aid workers were given sentences spanning lifetimes for terrorism or treason charges in a spectacle lacking all due process.
For the condemned and their families, it is a tragedy in and of itself. For those vested in Tunisian rights, and Tunisia’s development, it’s a harsh reminder of how alone they are as the shocking spectacle was largely met with silence, even from those who once pledged to stand side-by-side with Tunisian democracy. So, this milestone also marks the EU’s failure to support what was its flagship political engagement project since the 2011 Arab uprisings.
If Tunisia keeps sliding down this dark path, it will inevitably produce more difficulties in migration management; present rival powers like Russia with an opportunity for another Libya-style beachhead; and lead to a host of unpredictable yet assuredly disruptive human and security crises that accompany economic failure and political atrophy.
Tunisia is ailing
The harsh sentences are likely partly an effort from President Qais Saied to distract the public from Tunisia’s impossible-to-ignore economic malaise and associated sharp decline in the quality of life. Public services are crumbling. A five-year drought has driven sharp spikes in inflation and food insecurity. The result is a palpable sense of frustration and abandonment. A 2024 Arab Barometer survey found that 89% of Tunisians rated their economic situation as “bad” or “very bad,” and fewer than 36% expressed confidence in state institutions.
Saied is trying to assert his authority during this tough situation, both domestically and internationally. Central to this is the 2025 Finance Law, which takes bold and necessary steps towards a more progressive taxation system that Tunisia has long needed. But, it presents no solutions for overweening structural issues: state-owned enterprises are bloated and making heavy losses, shelves in shops are often bare and the private sector is throttled by bureaucracy, corruption and lack of investment. Instead, the state has resorted to domestic borrowing—forecast to rise to $7bn in 2025, up from $3.5bn in 2024—to sustain a faltering system, a strategy that risks bankruptcy.
With foreign investment drying up and Western donors wary, Algeria has been Tunisia’s crutch. In January 2025, Algeria delivered 22,000 tons of liquefied gas to stave off winter blackouts, and since 2020, it has provided $480m in loans and grants. Informal cross-border trade, tacitly tolerated by both governments, keeps northern Tunisian communities afloat. Tunisia’s dependence on Algeria has given Algiers a great deal of leverage over Tunis.
Saied’s cold-war era bearings have also resulted in a foreign policy of courting Russia and China, while railing against the West. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has brought investments in infrastructure, but these remain limited in scope and impact. Russia has expanded trade talks and was notably invited to participate in election monitoring in the legislative elections of 2022. It has used Tunisia’s vulnerability to probe for influence on Europe’s southern flank. Yet neither Beijing nor Moscow has provided the scale of financial assistance Tunisia needs to avert a crisis, making these relationships more symbolic than substantive.
Europe remains Tunisia’s largest trading partner, accounting for 54% of its trade in 2024. Yet EU leverage has diminished mainly due to Saied’s repeated rejection of reform conditions tied to an IMF deal, which the EU sees as a prerequisite for major financial support. But the EU has not developed an independent, unified approach to conditional aid. Instead, its engagement has been piecemeal and focused on migration, which has allowed Saied to resist reforms without losing all European support.
With economic fixes failing, Saied has doubled down on repression to maintain control. The recent show trials were followed by the arrest of a prominent defence attorney on terrorism charges. A second mass trial targeting 22 critics, including exiled leaders, began earlier this month. These judicial crackdowns are designed to silence dissent and intimidate would-be opponents.
Migrant communities have also become scapegoats for Tunisia’s woes. New laws in 2024 criminalised NGO aid to migrants, freezing accounts and jailing at least 40 activists. The president has fuelled a surge in racist violence against Black Africans with a flagrantly and violently racist anti-migration policy to secure European aid. Tunisia’s withdrawal from the African Court on Human Rights in March 2025 has closed off avenues for international redress.
These measures have not quelled criticism and resistance. Thousands have taken to the streets of Tunis, risking arrest and violence to protest Saied’s rule. The mere existence of the protests, especially given how perilous a pastime protesting is, demonstrates the limits of Saied’s methods as repressive or diversionary tactics while raising the spectre of exponentially rising oppressiveness.
More misery, less sovereignty
All Saied is achieving is to create a more adversarial relationship with his people and asphyxiate the ideas and discussion that might infuse some creativity into solving Tunisia’s problems before its constituent parts, from its economy to its ecology, comprehensively break down. Moreover, he is eliminating the opposition he uses to deflect blame for Tunisia’s malaise, meaning public discontent will only become more focused on him.
All President Qais Saied is achieving is to create a more adversarial relationship with his people and asphyxiate the ideas and discussion that might infuse some creativity into solving Tunisia’s problems
It may be instinctive to telegraph these dynamics towards a 2011-style uprising, which while possible, is unlikely in the current environment. The old security apparatus has settled quite snugly into power. A sense of nihilism permeates Tunisians more generally; a common refrain is that it is pointless to rise up again since last time got them nowhere.[1] There is also a wider sense among Arabs that these days (and especially given the unchecked, if not Western-enabled genocide in Gaza) that the state could just massacre them if they did rise up and no one would say anything. The region feels like it is in a different era from 2011, one of inescapable oppression, and that the revolutionary outlet will just lead to war and chaos, as it did in Syria or Sudan.
What is clear, however, is where these dynamics inevitably lead: the erosion of Tunisian sovereignty, the end of self-sufficiency, and a slide into chronic instability, marked by deepening poverty, social conflict and rising criminality. These corrosive drivers will foment new geopolitical perils across the sea from Europe, whether that’s driving Tunisian migration and empowering smuggling networks, or rekindling the spectre that a resurgent African jihadism opens a seaside front.
A European steer to right the ship
The European approach to Tunisia has prioritised short-term border control over long-term political and economic reform. The recent designation of Tunisia as a “safe country” for asylum returns would fast-track deportations, disregarding mounting evidence of political persecution and human rights abuses. This type of policy emboldens Saied, who recognises that the fear of migration spikes grants him leverage. As the Tunisian fiscal crisis gets worse and Saied more desperate, the perfect environment forms to extort Europe for more migration money and offer up more sovereignty to predatory powers like Russia.
France, Italy, the EU and other European governments should dust off the levers they have to jump-start Europe’s importance in the region and catch Tunisia’s freefall. To counteract this trend, European governments should re-engage diplomatically and, more importantly, push to protect a broader spectrum of Tunisian actors, including civil society and moderate opposition. Coordinated efforts with Algeria could also promote regional stability, especially around joint infrastructure and energy investments.
European states should also condition future financial aid on legal reforms and the protection of civil liberties. For instance, the EU provided at least €785m in aid between 2023 and 2025; it should try to leverage this to incentivise reform. The EU also provides much training and support programmes to the Tunisian security sector. Targeted conditionality can pressure the security apparatus to uphold Tunisian law.
Economically, European governments can reorient their capital expenditure towards green energy and other investments that will make their relationships more valuable to Tunisia. For instance, investment in green energy infrastructure—such as the ELMED electricity interconnector between Tunisia and Italy, co-financed by the EU—enhances energy security for both Europe and Tunisia and facilitates the expansion of renewable energy markets on both sides of the Mediterranean. This shift would give Europe greater leverage, and provide the incentive for ever greater investment or economic cooperation needed to induce stabilising measures such as reforms.
A resilient, economically integrated Tunisia is a better partner for Europe than a failing autocracy held together by repression and external aid. European leaders have the tools to stabilise the country whose democracy they once promised to protect. The question is whether they have the will.
[1] Author’s conversations with Tunisian contacts and analysts, 2022-2025
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