PART OF WELCOME WORD AS PRONOUNCED BY AMBASSADOR EICHHORST

Everybody is part of an process, a process of integration, of transition, of the results we want to achieve together, and this particularly goes for the Union for the Mediterranean – the UfM.  It’s the only network in the whole world, the only intergovernmental organisation where all of us, European Union, our partners in the Mediterranean (43) get together and that’s not just for being together at conferences.

I’m in general grateful for ‘conferences’, yet I often question whether we actually get real results from our encounters. I do believe we do because we are connecting, we are physically in the room, [we are human] and we are seeing we all have the same drive and the same need for interaction, and the same urgency of actually addressing integration, connectivity, as was mentioned so clearly before, because the region is still one of the least integrated regions in the world when we look at trade and investment.

The European Union takes 42% of exports into the EU from the region. That’s almost half. It’s not enough. It’s not enough, and vice versa. There is a trade imbalance. There are partners, including in Egypt and elsewhere, who are saying, look, we need to get this balance better. We fully agree because we want to, and we work to invest in all our partners here to make sure that all the elements are in place to attract investment, to create jobs, to re-export to the European Union, to import. All of this is high on the agenda, and I’m very proud of what we have been able to do in Egypt, Professor Gheneim will probably say more about this.

Egypt has been moving forward much faster than before, with a very clear target of attracting investors from the European Union and working on a very active trade and investment balance. Yet there are still trade barriers. There are multiple layers of decision making, which we also have in the European Union. But in the EU we are addressing these layers. I hope all of you have read the Draghi report and Enrico Lettas’ report about having a true single market.

I thank Miss Mariam again for mentioning youth. I get these questions very often from young Egyptians: ‘When do you take us seriously? When will you bring us in? Not only in the consultations, but also in the decisionmaking processes. And I take these requests very seriously.  We have to listen better, work better, because many young people in Egypt, across the region, they have the brightest and best ideas; for SMEs, for startups, for trying to move up on a very high ladder of steps they need to take to scale up those SMEs, and we are there to support. We do this. This is the European Union. And this is why I’m so proud to work for and with the European Union to try to create and help to get this enabling environment as we call it.