Thank you very much. I fully agree with the words expressed by my colleagues and by Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the [European] Commission, whom I want to thank for the work that she’s been doing.
We have achieved a very important goal today. President Sisi, thank you very much also for your hospitality.
I think that being here, all together, to sign this declaration means something very important.
It is the result of intense and effective diplomatic work that all of us have engaged in over the past months.
The joint declaration that Egypt and the European Union have adopted today is an important step towards the development of a true partnership able to address, in an integrated manner, all of the complex challenges of our times, from the regional ones, development and also illegal migration.
And I want to take also this opportunity once again to express my appreciation for the diplomatic efforts that President Sisi is pursuing together with the United States, with Qatar, moreover, in order to achieve a prolonged pause in hostilities in Gaza leading to the release of the hostages and towards a sustainable ceasefire. I’m telling you that also to say that I’m proud to announce that a Memorandum of Understanding with the Egyptian Ministry of Health was adopted today to strengthen bilateral collaboration in humanitarian assistance to wounded civilians arriving from Gaza. It is one additional piece of the wide-ranging humanitarian efforts that Italy has been putting in place since the outbreak of the conflict.
We must continue to work hard to achieve a Memorandum of Understanding able to lay the foundation for a new, I would say historic, page of our relations, deepening our political dialogue, working together for our respective economies.
And, as all my colleagues said before me, it is also the best way to face the problem of illegal migration, to fight human traffickers. The best way is to reaffirm the right of the citizens in the African continent not to emigrate towards Europe, and that is something that we can do only with development, and it is exactly what we are doing today.
I want to express a note of satisfaction for the role that Italy played in this new model of cooperation between Europe and the southern shore of the Mediterranean, which has become a model that we already started with the Memorandum of Understanding in Tunisia; it is working.
Within this European framework, as you know, Italy has also acted in a concrete manner through the Mattei Plan for Africa. Egypt is one of the countries identified in the plan, the priority countries, and it couldn’t have been otherwise. That’s why I’m also proud that during the course of this visit we adopted more than 10 memoranda, ranging from sustainable agriculture to financial support for small and medium-sized enterprises, to infrastructural development and health.
So, I am very satisfied with this important day and I warmly want to thank Ursula, my colleagues and President Sisi.