Switzerland will seek improved cooperation with Tunisia on migration issues after the two countries foreign ministers met on Thursday at the World Economic Forum summit in Davos.
This content was published on
1 minute
swissinfo.ch and agencies
A Swiss foreign ministry spokesman said after the meeting that a readmission accord would be negotiated with the Tunisians.
Swiss Foreign Minister Didier Burkhalter added later that his Tunisian counterpart Rafik Abdessalem was open to further cooperation and that specialists would travel to Switzerland in the coming days to discuss technical details of a potential agreement.
Abdelssalem pointed out during the talks though that Tunisia was facing migration problems of its own, with around 200,000 Libyan refugees on its soil.
More than 2,500 Tunisians filed requests for asylum in Switzerland last year, the second largest group to do so.
However, the Federal Migration Office said last week that Tunisian asylum seekers had practically no chance of being allowed to remain in Switzerland, and that 324 had returned home voluntarily in 2011.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.
Read more
More
Turning the Arab Spring into an Arab success
This content was published on
In the past few months, voting has taken place in both Tunisia and Egypt. In Tunisia, the moderate Islamist party, Ennahda, banned under Ben Ali, won the most seats in the Constituent Assembly, which is to draw up a new constitution. Elections to Egypt’s new national assembly were held in three stages from November to…
This content was published on
But has this group of Tunisians really earned a reputation as troublemakers and if so, what is going wrong? Unofficial police statistics from Zurich, published this week in the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, backed up the alarming headline: “Number of criminal North Africans set to double by the end of the year”. Swiss Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga…
This content was published on
Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga has mooted an amendment to the zoning laws and plans for an emergency concept to ease the shortage of accommodation for people applying for asylum in Switzerland. Despite agreement in principle between the federal and cantonal authorities, it has become apparent that plans to create additional capacities for 2,000 asylum seekers…
This content was published on
Chappatte has wryly summarised events of the Arab Spring since they began hitting the headlines last year. These drawings appeared in the International Herald Tribune, in the Geneva daily Le Temps and in the Sunday edition of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.