Ambassador's Eichhorst Speech on Europe Day 2026

Excellencies, Ministers, Governors, Ambassadors, Artists
Dear civil society, cooperation and business partners, colleagues, dear friends,

Thank you all for being here this evening, we are touched and humbled by welcoming so many, sharing in the joy of being together, of working together, of belonging together. 

So let me summarise our European Union - Egypt relationship in one sentence: 

It is the longest engagement in the world

It began way before Rome, before Greece even. 

It ran through Alexandria — I was just there again last week – 

through Arab scholars who kept knowledge alive while Europe was still finding its way. 

Through merchants, scientists, 

through travellers along the Nile, from the Delta, up to el-Minya, Assiut, Qena and Abu Simbel – where I was last month, to cross the vast High Dam lake down to Aswan –

through the builders of the Suez Canal, 

through diplomats who kept engaging when everything around them was breaking.

Let me stop here to thank you for welcoming me so warmly in the governorates, universities and institutions I visited so far.

The richness of our relationship goes well beyond art, architecture, trade, culinary traditions and historical heritage. 

Tonight — in this garden — our long-standing engagement, which has become a true partnership, continues : 

on two sides of the Mediterranean there are ancient, irreplaceable civilisations who have never, across thousands of years, stopped engaging. 

Tonight we celebrate the European Union’s founding moment. 

We celebrate our unity. 

Unity does not stop at borders, ideas do not stop at borders. 

The idea that built Europe was in fact never a true European idea. 

It drew on ideas that came, to a large extent, from right here.

Egypt and the European Union
 

So much brings us together. 

Our economies, our trade, our peoples, our culture, our science, our defence and security.

We work side by side on crisis response, the protection of the most vulnerable, in vast areas like energy, water, transport, agriculture, climate change, innovation, industrialisation, migration, digital transformation. 

We have strength, resilience, endurance — and we have built these, over years of partnership, precisely because we kept engaging when it was hard to do so.

Today, the absence of serious engagement, by choice, is visible. It is shocking.

The rubbles of unnecessary wars are piling up. 

In Gaza. In Ukraine. In Sudan. In Lebanon. The Gulf. Iran. And beyond. 

These are not distant headlines on our social media accounts. 

Real people, real suffering — close to us, geographically, morally, humanly.

President Al-Sisi said: “There is no military solution to any of the ongoing conflicts in our region”. And these are words the European Union shares entirely. 

Because our common history and geography have taught us one thing above all others : Violence is rarely a lasting solution ; it tends to breed more conflict rather than resolving the underlying issues.

Today, our focus is on a genuine political horizon : rooted in international law, in international humanitarian law, and in the three indivisible pillars of the United Nations: Peace and Security. Development. Human Rights. 

Our respective civilisations need a revamped vision for the future, based on the UN Charter and principles. And a 360-degree security approach anchored in the laws all UN Member States signed up to. A renewed coalition for multilateralism.

Egypt has been, consistently, a strong voice for cooperation and diplomacy. Egypt keeps all channels open when others bar their doors. For the land of the Nile, based on long and sometimes hard experience, it is clear that regional security and stability is indivisible. 

The same goes for Europe and the European Union

We see it. We respect it. 

And we want to build on it, including in a wider architecture of regional cooperation that makes dialogue possible and meaningful — through deeper engagement with the Union for the Mediterranean and the new Pact for the Mediterranean, through our work with the League of Arab States, the Gulf Cooperation Council, the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation.

Through new coalitions and alliances, which are being built as we gather here tonight.

In times of a rapidly changing world order, good neighbours, good partners, and good friends are worth their weight in gold. Egypt is all three. And the modern partnership we have built, is the foundation that makes everything else possible. 

At the heart of what we do are the people. And you have been enjoying I hope many shots of people in action on our screens tonight. 

Because partnerships are not built in meeting rooms or on podiums like this one. These are built in laboratories. In lecture halls. In steering committees. In research centres from Cairo to Copenhagen, from Beni Suef to Brussels, from Sohag to Sofia.

Across Egypt, the EU and our 27 EU Member States invest in education, in skills and talents, in equal opportunities for women, men and youth. We invest in open societies, in freedom, and in dignity. In trust and in mutual respect. Dialogue and shared prosperity.

This is not symbolic. It is transformational.

A shared vision for the future

Our teams are proof of that, every single day, far from the spotlights: our offices, the Delegation of the European Union, the EU Humanitarian Office, the European Investment Bank, the EU Office for Sudan, all work together under the same roof with that same vision. 

And I want to thank them all for their full support to this evening.

To a continued long-standing and successful, meaningful engagement. 

Happy Europe Day