Ahram Online (excerpt: A new Egyptian-French qualitative alliance)
Egypt and France are coming into alignment on a number of regional issues, as well as domestic challenges
Dr. Moatez Salama, Sunday 20 Dec 2020The current exceptional stage in Egyptian-French relations offers an opportunity to advance ties between the two countries to the level of a new "qualitative alliance". The objective is entrenching stability and security in the Mediterranean in the face of common regional challenges and similar internal battles the two countries are involved in vis-a-vis opposing parties in the region. Thus, this alliance is characterised with a special nature, reflected in President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi's visit to France 6 December, which was unprecedented in timing, form and content.
Egyptian-French relations have great significance due to the two countries’ regional, political and civilisational weight, and the nature of interests shared by both in the light of challenges regarding terrorism and other Mediterranean matters, especially Turkish intervention in the Eastern Mediterranean and crises facing countries such as Libya, Syria and Lebanon, as well as immigration, organised crime and the Palestinian cause.
Continuous compatibility
Regarding the terrorism issue, Egypt kept suffering for decades from extremist groups’ terrorism and kept alerting countries providing a safe haven to extremism about its dangers. Such Egyptian alarms increased after 2013. When terrorism struck badly and heavily in France’s heart in 2020, Paris adopted a security standpoint more in tune with the Egyptian stance on the terrorism issue, distinguishing it from human rights issues, which had dominated French discourse towards Arab countries and the Mediterranean frame. France became one of the European countries most interested in the Egyptian point of view.
A new bill discussed recently by the French cabinet — including “enhancing the supervision of religious societies and their funding and criminalising hatred via internet” as well as measures to combat extremism by closing 400 societies, mosque and sports halls and different sites — is but an indicator of the impact of terrorism on French national security. Hence, the two countries’ views have converged regarding the characteristics and essence of the battle in the heart of the Arab world and Europe; namely, the confrontation between “nationalism” and “fundamentalisms”.
All this points to the necessity of cooperation between the two countries on this issue, which won’t reverberate only in the security sphere, but will also contribute to deepening military cooperation and bringing intellectual and strategic visions more closely into line. In this specific context, Egyptian-French relations constitute a regional centre of gravity, anticipating changes that might take place on the international arena towards this issue. Egypt needs to widen the distinction between necessities of combating terrorism and human rights principles, within in the European frame and the Western frame as a whole, and France can help Egypt in this regard. France needs Egypt with regard to its security expertise in combating terrorism, to help the French interior and in kareas that France dedicates more attention to in Africa.
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