Mr Chairman, the EU wishes firstly to commend Egypt's resilience in spite of a troubled and challenging regional context. The EU acknowledges that Egypt is going through significant domestic challenges; nevertheless, Egypt has showed continued commitment towards the multilateral trading system, balancing the internal and exogenous shocks.

Egypt has demonstrated this commitment through deep economic reform to enable it to harness international trade as a lever for growth. These reforms included cutting subsidies, floating the national currency and significant investment in infrastructure. Changes were also made to improve the business climate in order to attract investment.

Today, Egypt's projected growth rate is very positive although high unemployment persists and poverty alleviation remains a primary concern. In order to preserve this overall positive trajectory and begin to resolve these systemic problems, the EU encourages Egypt to continue to implement deep and lasting economic reform and fully supports Egypt's objectives to foster a more participatory role of the private sector in the economy, to diversify exports and to stimulate investment.

At the bilateral level, the EU and Egypt enjoy a free trade area through our Association Agreement and the EU is Egypt's primary import and export partner. Since the coming into force of the Agreement, EU-Egypt trade more than doubled from €11.8 billion in 2004 to €27.3 billion in 2016. Egypt is also engaged in regional negotiations and collaboration elsewhere, including deepening the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) arrangement as well as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area.

Mr Chairman, despite these decidedly positive aspects, the EU considers that Egypt should invest further in certain areas to enhance its trading environment.

The issues raised in our written questions are confirmed by EU operators as obstacles to trade. Today, I will list only some of them:

Firstly, the EU notes with concern that Decree 43/2016 has made imports of twenty-four categories of goods more difficult, in that (inter alia), shipments must come from registered manufacturers or trademark owners. Registration is an onerous process, and comes in addition to the requirement of compulsory pre-shipment inspection. While the EU understands that these measures were implemented in the midst of serious foreign currency shortages, foreign currency levels are now at their record high, covering 8 months of imports. In the spirit of the Trade Facilitation Agreement, the EU thus expects that these measures will be lifted.

Indeed, the EU welcomes Egypt's ratification of the Trade Facilitation Agreement and the activation of the Single Administrative Document system. Furthermore, the EU also recognises Egypt's continuous efforts towards reducing the documentary burden on businesses in this context. Nevertheless, we note that the Category A commitments cover only 20.1% of all commitments under the TFA. In this respect, the EU would invite the government of Egypt to re-visit those commitments.

Secondly, the EU considers that aligning SPS requirements to international standards and minimising their restrictiveness is a key prerequisite to improving Egypt's trading environment; this is why we have requested clarifications on a number of SPS measures, relating to (inter alia) moisture levels in wheat and yeast levels in cheese, avian influenza measures for day-old chicks and reference country lists for infant milk.

Thirdly, although Egypt has taken certain steps to improve the efficiency and transparency of its customs administration, the EU believes that further action is required to remove the remaining hurdles. Notably, the EU would encourage improving certain customs procedures, in particular the requirement to send certain customs documents through banks, and to avoid that the vast majority of imports are still processed through the more cumbersome "red channel". These examples tend to negate Egypt's efforts elsewhere to simplify the customs process.  

Finally, the EU appreciates the efforts Egypt has made to update its notifications as part of the present review and would encourage Egypt to continue doing it on a constant basis.

On behalf of the EU, I look forward to a constructive exchange of views during this review. I wish the Egyptian delegation every success during its Trade Policy Review.