By Penelope Galliou

Greece, as well as Europe, is once again on heightened alert due to the increasing trend of migration flows that has recently been observed again from North Africa, Egypt, activating both the competent authorities and the political leaderships of the European countries involved. In this context, the Greek prime minister is going to Cairo on Sunday, Kyriakos Mitsotakiswith the president of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the prime ministers of Italy Georgia Meloni and Belgium Alexander De Croix.

The European Union is preparing an aid package of 7.4 billion euros for the Egypt, of which 1 billion is expected to be disbursed immediately within 2024, in order to cover short-term needs. The aid package is aimed at supporting its economy amid fears that conflicts in Gaza and Sudan risk exacerbating economic problems in the North African country and increasing migratory pressure in Europe.

Under these conditions, its president European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and the European leaders who will go to the Egyptian capital, are expected to finalize and announce the said agreement. The main aim is to avoid economic instability around Europe’s neighborhood but also to stop irregular immigration from the Africa. In this direction, the Greek side made a decisive contribution, claiming the greatest European support for Egypt, pressing the issue of the agreement as absolutely necessary to prevent a new wave of immigration to Europe. Following these, the European leaders are expected to ask Egypt for its cooperation on the migration issue, given that the flows to Europe from North Africa have begun to multiply and it is not excluded that they will increase even more in the coming period.

This is precisely what worries the Greek side as well, as the Minister of Immigration and Asylum announced, Dimitris Kairides ” the increasing trend of immigrants from eastern Libya it is small, controllable but with an increasing trend, which worries and concerns us, which is why we are taking a series of initiatives to deal with this new front”.

“There’s a problem with Egypt, there’s no doubt about it,” he admitted, underlining, however, the decisive and stabilizing role the North African country has played in the re-ignition in the Middle East. In other words, although it hosts nine million refugees, it has decisively controlled its migration flows until now, “Not a single boat has left the Egyptian coast in the last decade, yet we see that from eastern Libya, an autonomous region through the civil war, we have a small – but with a slight upward trend in the last period – flow towards southern Crete” observed Mr. Kairidis.