Two of the Arab Maghreb's key players, Tunisia and Algeria, have agreed to deepen their relations around several key economic, political, and migration matters.

• Tunisian and Algerian officials on Wednesday (August 5th) wrapped up meetings that achieved agreements on a range of migration, trade and cultural issues.
• Algeria and Tunisia need to “raise relations between the two brotherly countries to the highest levels” and to tightly weave their “fabric of mutual interests,” said Abdelhafidh El Hargam, the Tunisian secretary of state for Maghreb, Arab, and African affairs, at the opening of the two-day session of the Tunisian-Algerian High Joint Commission.
• In the session, the committee negotiated nine co-operation agreements in the economic, commercial, cultural and educational fields, and updated their “outdated” 1963 settlement agreement to reflect current bilateral migration trends.
• Central to the committee’s two-day session was the human face of migration and economic issues, in which both sides have a vested interest. A total of 19,500 Algerians are registered as living in Tunisia, by Algerian Foreign Ministry estimates; Tunisians living in Algeria number about 16,000, according to the Tunisian Expatriates Department.
• Both sides pledged to guarantee fair treatment for expatriate communities in order to improve their living conditions, with the aim of enabling such migrants to help the two countries build an “exemplary partnership in the region”.
• Algerian Minister for Maghreb and African Affairs Abdelkader Messahel, who chaired the session along with El Hargam, highlighted the human dimension of bilateral relations in his opening speech.
• While acknowledging that “some outstanding problems” required more problem-solving by the two countries, Messahel stressed the need to “make the effort required to re-organize and adapt the human ties and communication between Algeria and Tunisia.”
• Reflecting on the importance of enhanced economic bonds, El Hargam said it was important to “accelerate the qualification of the legal framework for co-operation in the banking and financial field to keep up with the constant development of economic relations between the two countries and to complete the bilateral projects proposed in the fields of transport, land transport in particular.”
• Algeria and Tunisia signed a preferential trade agreement in December 2008, and are engaged in ongoing talks to establish a free trade zone between the two countries. Last year, by committee estimates, bilateral trade reached $1.2 billion.
• Analysts and ordinary citizens of both countries were both cautiously upbeat about the session’s outcomes.
• Ben Hadid, an Algerian residing in Tunisia, voiced doubts that a new agreement covering property rights for the two countries’ expatriate communities would meet expectations, saying, “These committees pretend to be doing something, but, in fact, they can’t be effective.”
• “Opening a small trade shop requires a license that takes months and years to get,” said Ben Hadid. “And selling land inherited by an Algerian from his father, who lived and settled for decades in Tunisia, requires a license from the governor. However, that license will be obtained only when the land loses its real value because of inflation.”
• However, Noureddine Jaffal, an Algerian born in Tunisia, expressed optimism that the pace would finally pick up on resolving long-standing issues.
• Commentators and political analysts also weighed in on the commission’s progress and relations between the two countries.
• “We must, at least procedurally, officially separate cross-border trade from the smuggling that extends along the entire border, year-round, and that includes a wide variety of commodities and products,” political analyst and Maghreb affairs specialist Nasredine Ben Hadid said in a statement to Magharebia. “At the same time, we shouldn’t forget what Algerian tourists bring back from Tunisia.”
• Algeria and Tunisia hold “close views on several issues, such as the Mediterranean Union”, Nouredine Lembarki, of the newspaper al-Watan noted. “The political aspects of Algerian-Tunisian relations have in recent years been linked to fighting terrorism, which is a danger threatening the two countries,” he added.