EU, new migration partnership with Mauritania. €210 million committed

Brussels – Another strategic partnership on migration: This time, the EU will mobilize €210 million for Mauritania, a country in the western Sahel through which passes the route that takes tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants to attempt the crossing to the Canary Islands, and then to mainland Spain. EU Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, launched it from Nouakchott, along with Mauritania’s Minister of the Interior Mohamed Ahmed Ould Mohamed Lemine.

The ground had already been sown by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who had been only a month ago in the Mauritanian capital, accompanied by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. Much like the much broader Comprehensive Partnership with Tunisia, this will be based on five pillars, and it envisions cooperation “based on solidarity, shared responsibility and respect for fundamental and human rights.”

On the one hand, support for Global Gateway initiatives: investment, infrastructure, and job creation, especially in the energy sector. On the other, migration management, with the imperative of combating irregular migration and migrant smuggling, and promoting skilled mobility for students, researchers and entrepreneurs. “Europe also needs migration,” Johansson told a press conference from Nouakchott, “but regular migration.

With the idea that stemming departures from Africa requires improving access to jobs and credit in countries of origin and transit, the EU will mobilize resources to “strengthen access to vocational training and financing for businesses,” as well as to “improve the skills and competencies of young Mauritanians, particularly women.” In parallel, Brussels pledges to support national reception capacities and Mauritania’s efforts to address the arrival of refugees in its country.

The centrepiece of the agreement is the cooperation to prevent irregular migration, in light of the more than 40 thousand arrivals registered in 2023 in the Canary Islands, a 161 per cent increase from 2022. The goal is to combat migrant smuggling and human trafficking while finding means to protect victims. This should be done through joint investigations, enhanced security, and greater operational cooperation. The EU commissioner, who, in 2020, visited Nouadhibou, one of the departure points for the Canary Islands, stressed that that 800-kilometer stretch of sea “has the highest number of victims and tragedies.”

At sea, Mauritania will have to strengthen its border management: Frontex will provide training and equipment to national authorities to increase cooperation in search and rescue operations and make coastal control more capillary.  Dismantling the traffickers’ business model is a task on which “Mauritania has already done a very good job,” Johansson stressed. But not only that: the same argument applies to the reception of refugees from neighboring conflicts, as evidenced by the “excellent work with the 150,000 refugees from Mali.”