The EU will use a bilateral summit with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in October to improve its offer to the North African state, which has emerged as a key regional ally of the bloc on migration control and energy.
EU officials confirmed this week that the bilateral summit will be held on 22 October in Brussels.
For their part, EU diplomats held their first exchange of views on the draft joint statement that will follow the summit earlier this week.
Diplomats said that the summit would also focus on the war in Gaza, which borders Egypt, as well as the EU's financial support for Cairo and energy projects.
It will also focus on commitments on respect for human rights and migration co-operation.
Officials told EUobserver that the summit would be crucial to “strengthening the of bilateral relationship under the EU-Egypt Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership.”
In March, the EU held a similar summit with South Africa, at which investment in energy projects was also high on the agenda.
Bilateral summits, particularly with African countries, are a rarity for the EU and the October summit is a reflection of how important a partner Egypt has become to Europe.
It also takes place a month before an EU-African Union summit, which will be held in Angola.
In March 2024, the EU agreed to provide €7.4bn in budget support and investment to Egypt in exchange for greater border control and cooperation on migration policy, making it far more lucrative that the EU’s other ‘cash for migrant control’ pacts with African states: Tunisia and Mauritania.
Since then, the EU Commission has agreed a €3bn deal with Jordan and is in negotiations with a handful of West African states, including Senegal, on other migration-control pacts.
Although civil society groups have reported major and multiple human rights violations of refugees fleeing the two-year civil war in Sudan at the hands of the Egyptian authorities, including arbitrary arrest and detention and cases of refugees being deported back to Sudan, the EU executive has repeatedly praised the al-Sisi government’s handling of the refugee crisis.
As well as migration, Egypt is a major potential producer of green hydrogen, a priority for the EU as it seeks to diversify its energy supply and move away from Russian gas.
It now has green hydrogen projects worth a combined $175bn ongoing.
The EU has also continued to offer more incentives to Egypt.
Last June, an EU-Egypt investment conference saw the signing of deals worth over €40bn, primarily on green hydrogen and other energy projects.
EU officials have also been working on an agreement between Egypt and Europol, the EU agency which pools information and resources between the bloc’s law enforcement authorities.
Egypt joined the Horizon Europe research programme as an associate member in April.
And it is likely to be one of the main beneficiaries, along with Morocco, from the ‘New Pact for the Mediterranean’, which president Ursula von der Leyen's EU commission has promised to unveil in the coming months, aimed at deepening EU relations with North African and Middle East countries.
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Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Benjamin Fox is a seasoned reporter and editor, previously working for fellow Brussels publication Euractiv. His reporting has also been published in the Guardian, the East African, Euractiv, Private Eye and Africa Confidential, among others. He heads up the AU-EU section at EUobserver, based in Nairobi, Kenya.