Brussels, 05/11/2015 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 2 November, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini announced that the EU and Egypt would revitalise their bilateral relations.
“It was very important for me to pay an official bilateral visit to Cairo to revitalise our bilateral relations”, Mogherini said at the end of a meeting with Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry. “It will be very important for the whole of the European Union that we (…) manage to do so in the coming months”, she stated. With “intense work, we are going to restart on all the different levels of our cooperation”, she added. A concrete example of this is that during her stay, Mogherini signed an agreement with Egypt's Minister for International Cooperation Sahar Nasr for a grant of €68 million to finance a gas connection project in Egypt. Asked on 3 November about the EU-Egypt cooperation and the means for boosting it, the European External Action Service (EEAS) had not replied to EUROPE's question by 5 November.
Also asked about the €5 billion pledged to Egypt in November 2012 (see EUROPE 10730), the EEAS said that the task force's pledges, which “encompassed the EU's continued political, financial and technical support to the democratic transition”, had been affected by the political crisis in Egypt. According to the EEAS, out of the overall package announced at the task force, the European financial institutions have contributed over €2 billion in concessional loans to big infrastructure projects. The EEAS states that the funding of the bilateral programmes signed with the Egyptian authorities since November 2012 (or in the pipeline) under the European Neighbourhood Instrument amounts to nearly €400 million. The macro-financial aid (for an amount initially planned of €500 million) has still not been released because it requires an arrangement between Egypt and the International Monetary Fund. “The Commission remains ready to propose a macro-financial aid operation to Egypt when the circumstances so permit and provided the pre-conditions are met”, the EEAS told EUROPE. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)