Over 2024, the EU will provide €87 million and new equipment to Egypt for a migration management project started in 2022, implemented by the UN migration agency and the French Interior Ministry operator Civipol, three sources close to the matter confirmed to Euractiv.
The €87 million may increase up to €110 million after the next EU-Egypt Association Council meeting on 23 January, two sources confirmed to Euractiv.
The European Commission is also conducting parallel negotiations with Cairo to make a raft of funding for other projects which regards a wide range of sectors, including migration, conditional under the International Monetary Fund requests for reforms, a source close to the negotiations told Euractiv.
The €87 million will be dedicated to increasing the operation capacity of the Egyptian navy and border guards for border surveillance and search and rescue operations at sea.
The EU-Egypt migration management project started in 2022 with an initial €23 million, with a further €115 million approved for 2023, one of the three sources confirmed to Euractiv.
The funds for 2022 and 2023 were used for border management, anti-smuggling and anti-trafficking activities, voluntary returns and reintegration projects.
“With these EU funds, IOM [the UN’s migration agency, the International Organisation of Migration] is supporting Egyptian authorities through capacity building activities which promote rights-based border management and the respect of international law and standards, also with regard to search and rescue operations,” an official source from IOM told Euractiv. IOM is involved in the training and capacity building of the Egyptian authorities.
French operator Civipol is working on the tendering, producing and delivering the search new rescue boats for 2024, one of the three sources confirmed to Euractiv.
However, according to the EU’s asylum agency’s (EUAA) 2023 migration report, there have been almost no irregular departures from the Egyptian coasts since 2016, with most Egyptian irregular migrants to the EU having departed from Libya.
At the same time, there has been a significant increase in Egyptian citizens applying for visas in EU countries in recent years, the EUAA report said, mainly due to the deteriorating domestic situation in the country.
Deepening crisis in Egypt
Egypt, a strategic partner of the EU, is experiencing a deepening economic and political crisis, with the country’s population of 107 million facing increasing instability and a lack of human rights guarantees.
In a letter to heads of state and EU institutions last December, the NGO Human Rights Watch asked the EU to “ensure that any recalibration of its partnership with Egypt and related macro-financial assistance provide[s] an opportunity to improve the civil, political, and economic rights of the Egyptian people”.
“Its impact will only be long-lasting if linked to structural progress and reforms to address the government’s abuses and oppression, that have strangled people’s rights as much as the country’s economy,” the NGO wrote.
The human rights crisis cannot be treated as separate from the economic crisis, Timothy E. Kaldas, deputy director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told Euractiv. “Political decisions and political practices of the regime play a central role in why Egypt’s economy is the way that it is,” he said.
“The regime, in an exploitative manner, leverages the Egyptian state. For instance, it forces the making of contracts to regime-owned companies to do infrastructure projects that are extremely costly, and not necessarily contributing to the public good,” Kaldas argued, citing the construction of wholly new cities, or “new palaces for the president”.
While such projects are making the Egyptian elites richer, the Egyptian people are increasingly poor, and in certain cases, forced to leave the country, Kaldas explained.
With food and beverage inflation exceeding 70% in Egypt in 2023, the currency facing multiple shocks and collapses reducing Egyptians’ purchasing power and private investors not seeing the North African country as a good place to invest, “the situation is very bleak”, the expert said.
The independence of the private sector was slammed in a report by Human Rights Watch in November 2018. In the case of Juhayna Owners, two Egyptian businessmen were detained for months after refusing to surrender their shares in their company to a state-owned business.
Recent events at the Rafah crossing in Gaza, frictions in the Red Sea with Houthi rebels in Yemen and war in the border country of Sudan have compounded the instability.
Past EU-Egypt relations
During the last EU-Egypt Association Council in June 2022, the two partners outlined a list of partnership priorities “to promote joint interests, to guarantee long-term stability and sustainable development on both sides of the Mediterranean and to reinforce the cooperation and realise the untapped potential of the relationship”.
The list of priorities regards a wide range of sectors that the EU is willing to help Egypt. Among others, the document which outlines the outcomes of the meeting, highlights the transition to digitalisation, sustainability and green economy, trade and investment, social development and social justice, energy, environment and climate action, the reform of the public sector, security and terrorism, and migration.
