Parliament speaker affirms Egypt’s rejection to EU reception camps for refugees

CAIRO – 2 July 2018: The Egyptian authorities refused a proposal of establishing European camps for refugees in Egypt, Parliament Speaker Ali Abdel-Aal told Welt am Sonntag newspaper on Sunday.

“EU reception facilities for migrants in Egypt would violate the law and the Constitution of our country,” said Abdel-Aal, adding that legal refugees and migrants can live in any place they want in Egypt and should not be forced to live in camps.

Last August, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Egypt reported that the number of registered refugees and asylum seekers in the country was about 209,000. Unofficial estimates, however, indicate that there are more than 300,000 refugees in the country, including those who are registered in the UNHCR. In 2016, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said that Egypt hosts around 5 million refugees (registered and unregistered).

The UNHCR's annual "Global Trends" study found that a staggering 68.5 million people worldwide had been forcibly displaced by the end of 2017.

Abdel-Aal’s comments on Egypt’s stance towards the European notion do not differ from a previous remark given by Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry during his meeting with European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, in December 2017. Shoukry affirmed Egypt’s refusal to the EU offer.

Egypt and Germany signed a deal on illegal migration and refugees. The deal stipulates that Germany will give Egypt €28 million in grant for technical trainings and education and providing help in the small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) sector. During German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit to Cairo in March, some German media outlets indicated that Merkel could have an agreement with President Sisi on the migration crisis.

In November 2016, Interior Minister of German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Thomas Strol, said that Germany sought to create camps for refugees in Egypt to resettle 500,000 refugees. Also, in March 2018, AFP reported that Merkel announced a deal with Tunis, where Germany will provide €250 million in aid for development projects in poor areas, and in return, there will be cooperation between both countries to extradite rejected asylum-seekers to Tunisia.

In a bid to renew Egypt’s moral and legal commitment towards refugees in the territory, Egypt called on the international community to share the collective responsibility of hosting refugees, said Ahmed Abu Zeid in a statement on World Refugee Day.

Moreover, a cooperation program between Egypt and the EU has been reached after holding a meeting in December 2017 in Cairo. The meeting recommended that some European countries should resettle a number of refugees from the hosting neighboring countries, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Abu Zeid in a statement on Saturday.

Portugal will resettle 400 refugees residing in Egypt in 2018/2019 in light of an agreement reached between Egypt and the European Union (EU) on migration, Abu Zeid said.

“This fruitful cooperation with Portugal comes in the framework of a comprehensive dialogue between Egypt and the European Union on migration, and [in light of] the efforts Egypt exerts with EU to resettle a number of refugees residing in Egypt,” the statement read.