Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Taiani said Thursday in Rome that his country wants the International Monetary Fund to start disbursing a loan to Tunisia without conditions.

"Our proposal is to start financing Tunisia through the International Monetary Fund and then pay a second tranche, after the first tranche, with the progress of reforms," he said during a press conference with his Tunisian counterpart, Nabil Ammar.

Taiani stressed that the two tranches should not be "entirely conditioned on the conclusion of the course of reforms," adding, "The minister assured me that the reforms will continue."

Last week, Tunisian President Kais Saied expressed his rejection of the "dictates" of the International Monetary Fund, which asked Tunisia to carry out economic reforms and remove part of government support in return for granting it a loan.

Saeed said, "Dictations that come from abroad and lead to more impoverishment are unacceptable."

European leaders, including Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni, fear the collapse of the Tunisian economy and the influx of more migrants to European shores.

And its foreign minister considered Thursday in Rome that "all skeptical or not positive messages with regard to Tunisia (...) do not help the Tunisian economy and thus feed all pests, including irregular migration."

"Helping the Tunisian economy also means fighting immigration," said Antonio Taiani.

Tunisia's debts amount to about 80% of its gross domestic product, and it reached a preliminary agreement with the International Monetary Fund in mid-October to obtain a new loan of about two billion dollars to help it overcome the serious financial crisis it is going through.

But the talks have reached an impasse over Tunisia's failure to strictly implement a reform program to restructure more than 100 heavily indebted state-owned companies and lift subsidies on some basic goods and services.