Thibaud Hue 10:20 a.m., July 05, 2022, modified at 10:20 a.m., July 05, 2022

The thermometer is rising, summer is here, and more and more tourists are arriving in France.

But, the hotel and catering industry is short of staff: 150,000 positions are still vacant while the needs are very great.

And the bosses are struggling to find seasonal workers.

So France is looking abroad.

An agreement was signed on Wednesday between the UMIH and Tunisia.

REPORTAGE

The agreement signed Wednesday between the UMIH and Tunisia stipulates that 4,000 Tunisian seasonal workers will be able to be recruited in France.

An agreement that could be renewed each year, to the chagrin of Tunisian restaurateurs.

On a discreet terrace, in the shade of palm trees, six black tables line a bay window.

In this Italian restaurant in La Marsa, a town 15 kilometers from the Tunisian capital, Youssef, a waiter, holds his tray with both hands.

He has not yet applied for the seasonal positions opened by France, but he intends to leave soon.

150 euros in a single day in France

"Here, I don't have enough money to live. One of my friends went to France and he told me that he took 150 euros in a single day", he confides on Europe 1. Youssef has a salary of 700 dinars excluding tip, or 218 euros per month, barely enough to live on… He dreams of landing one of the five-month fixed-term contracts, just like Skander, the pizza maker, who is also aiming for a better job.

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So the boss, Aziz Galadou, who has already lost a master of the dining room, gone to France, is very worried about his restaurant.

He denounces unfair competition: "We are going to find ourselves without employees, so after Covid-19, we spent two years practically without tourism, without hotels. France announces this news practically after the recovery so and for me, it is catastrophic ".

To cope, the restaurateur is trying to increase salaries to the extent of his means, by around twenty euros per month.

He knows that some of his Tunisian employees will be tempted by the level of French wages.