New Police Agreement between Egypt and Italy: Lip Services to Human Rights

By Omnia Magdy

On the 30th of January 2026, Egypt and Italy signed a new police agreement. The new agreement shows yet again how farcical European Union states’ lip service to human rights or democracy is while cooperating with the Egyptian military dictatorship.

Ten years ago, the torture and death of Italian national Giulio Regeni in Egypt had led to tensions between Egypt and Italy. On January 25th, 2016, Regeni, who was in Egypt doing his doctoral research on independent trade unions, disappeared. He was found dead nine days later on the outskirts of Cairo. His mutilated body showed severe signs of torture, with evidence and witness statements indicating that he had been killed by Egyptian security forces.

Four high-ranking members of the Egyptian security apparatus were identified as the main suspects by the Italian public prosecutor’s office. Yet Egyptian representatives have since refused to cooperate with the investigation necessary for a trial. Egyptian dictator Abdel Fattah al-Sisi had promised an investigation, but no conclusion was ever reached.

Although the Regeni case remains unresolved, Italian Police Chief Pisani defended the agreement, which was signed in Rome with the director of the Egyptian Police Academy Abdel Kader Abdel Rahman, as a step in strengthening “human rights”. Unironically, at the same time, the Italian Foreign Ministry continues to advise against travel to Egypt for security reasons.

The agreement is part of a European training project designed to “manage migration flows and combat human trafficking” in which police officers from 22 African countries are participating. The agreement is part of the ITEPA (International Training at the Egyptian Police Academy), which was launched as a European initiative with strong Italian participation. Its goal is to establish an international, specialized training center at the police academy in Cairo.

Several international and European organizations are involved in the program, including the EUAA, Frontex, Interpol, UNODC, UNHCR, and IOM. Depending on their mandate, they contribute to training, operational cooperation, and migration flow management.

The training is aimed at police and border officials from African countries of origin and transit for migrants to Europe. The objective is to strengthen operational capabilities in border control, migration management, and investigations into human trafficking.

The first project phase (2018–2019) was funded with €1.7 million from the European ISF’s Borders and Visa fund.

The EU has a long history of cooperating with the Egyptian military dictatorship

On the 22nd of October 2025, the first-ever EU-Egypt summit took place in Brussels. While EU and Egyptian officials self-congratulate themselves on their partnership, the meeting masks far sinister interests.

In a public statement, EU officials state that:
“The summit was an opportunity to further deepen EU-Egypt bilateral relations and their political and economic partnership, with the aim of fostering the parties’ shared stability, peace and prosperity. The leaders underlined their shared ambition to cooperate on common global and regional matters, including the situation in the Middle East, Ukraine, multilateralism, trade, migration and security.”

In the EU-Egypt joint statement published after the summit, it is further declared:
“We emphasise our shared ambition to further deepen long-term strategic ties, cooperate in addressing our many global and regional common challenges, promote joint interests and renew partnership priorities.”

The joint statement reiterates that both the EU and Egypt are actively upholding: “universal values of democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The emptiness of these words are self-evident in light of the genocide in Gaza, in which the EU and the Egyptian state are highly complicit in or the tens of thousands of political prisoners in Egyptian jails or the fact that thousands of refugees have died in the Mediterrean due to fortress Europe.

That the statement further praises and celebrates Trump’s colonial Gaza plan, is also no surprise.

Through the EU’s deepening of the “strategic partnership” with the Egyptian state, the EU wishes to stabilize the Egyptian military dictatorship for a couple of reasons. Egypt plays a crucial role in upholding the border with Gaza and oppressing the Palestinians and retaining “peace” with the settler colonial Israeli state, which Western imperialism relies on. Furthermore, the Egyptian military dictatorship is an important ally in curbing migration to Europe.

Egypt gains from cooperating with the EU. The joint statement’s plan to cooperate further on “counterterrorism, border security, law enforcement, cybercrime” is beneficial for Egypt in its crackdown on dissidents, while Egypt also gains from cooperating with the EU in light of desperately needed financial aid.

This is not the first agreement between the EU and Egypt.

In November 2024, the European Union approved 20 million euros in assistance to the Egyptian Armed Forces. The Egyptian Armed Forces are to use the funds to “enhance national security and stability” as well as “protect civilians.”

Speaking to Mada Masr in 2024, Hussein Baoumi, Amnesty International’s EU foreign policy, explained that: “This could be the first time that the EU, as an integrated union, [has provided] the Armed Forces with military aid, but it is not the first for a European country or entity to cooperate or provide weapons, funds or training to the Armed Forces.”
The new “assistance” comes in light of other deals the Egyptian military dictatorship has made with the EU just this year and in previous years, as Egypt’s geostrategic role is increasingly valuable for the interests of the West.

In March 2024, the European Union’s Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Egyptian military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi signed an 8 billion dollar “financial and investment aid package.” The signed “Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership” which spans from 2024 to 2027 covers six pillars: political relations, economic stability, trade and investments, migration and mobility, security and demography and human capital.”

Hindering Migration and the Gaza Genocide

Also, in March 2024, Egypt struck a deal with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout loan of 8 billion dollars: “The deal with the IMF was combined with economic reforms that included the flotation of the Egyptian pound and a sharp raising of the main interest rate.”
The EU-Egypt aid package consists of grants and loans over the next three years and is formally set to expand Egypt-EU cooperation. A joint statement read: “The European Union recognizes Egypt as a reliable partner and its unique and vital geostrategic role as a pillar of security, moderation and peace in the Mediterranean, Near East and African region.”
The European Commission says the deal aims to promote “democracy, fundamental freedoms, human rights, and gender equality.” What the deal is about becomes clear in the fine print: keeping refugees out of the EU.

As AP reports:
“The EU will provide assistance to Egypt’s government to fortify its borders, especially with Libya, a major transit point for migrants fleeing poverty and conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. The 27-nation bloc will also support the government in hosting Sudanese who have fled nearly a year of fighting between rival generals in their country. Egypt received more than 460,000 Sudanese since April last year.”

The EU has signed similar deals to “restrict migration” with Tunisia and Mauritania. The support of the Libyan coast guard and its human rights violations or the EU-Turkey deal of 2016, where the EU paid Erdogan 6 billion Euros to keep Syrian refugees out of the EU. Nine million migrants, mainly from other African nations, are living in Egypt, 480.000 of whom are registered refugees and asylum-seekers with the U.N. refugee agency. Because of the serious economic and human rights situation in Egypt, more and more Egyptians are also looking for a way out of the country. Most Egyptians fleeing to Europe reach Italy via the Mediterranean Sea.

Such figures have led the EU to do deals with Egypt in the years before, such as the 80 million Euros given to the Egyptian coast guard by the EU to catch refugees fleeing to Europe, signed in 2022. Or the 23 million euros from the EU’s “Neighbourhood, Development and International Cooperation Instrument” (NDICI) to Egypt in 2023, which the EU stated was to be used to improve the “border management” of Egyptian authorities. The EU stated that this program exists to contribute to “the eradication of poverty and the promotion of sustainable development, prosperity, peace and stability.”

“Border management” and “promotion of stability” are euphemisms for hindering migrants from coming to the EU at all costs, even by letting them die. The European Border and Coast Guard Agency (FRONTEXT) who writes the same phrases on its website is notoriously known for actively having allowed thousands of migrants to drown throughout the last years.

While the EU currently supports the ongoing genocide in Gaza, the EU simultaneously fears a destabilization of the region that could lead to Palestinians fleeing to Europe. Israel continues to bomb Gaza, which has slaughtered over 100,000 Palestinian men, women, and children.

The hypocrisy of the EU should come as no surprise. In its imperialist logics, the EU does not come to the only viable solution to stop the ongoing causes of destabilization: end of all economic, political, and military support to the settler colony of Israel.
Instead, the EU, as it has done before, fortifies its borders to hinder those same refugees fleeing from the bombs that the EU member states themselves have delivered to Israel while simultaneously supporting the brutal military dictatorship of Abdel Fattah el Sisi.
One of the main EU member states, Germany, has itself increased its arms exports to Israel tenfold in 2023 and continues to deliver weapons to Israel. Hence, the weapons being deployed in the genocide in Gaza come directly from EU member states.

The German state has reiterated once and again that it stands unconditionally on the side of Israel and that Israel has a right to self-defense. The “collateral damage” of over 100,000 Palestinians being slaughtered in the genocide of Gaza seems to be the “price” states like Germany are willing to pay for their imperialist interests in the region.

The EU’s economic and political interests are the very foundation of the collaboration with dictatorships like Egypt. The talk of “human rights” is mere lip service, serving as a liberal facade for the brutal policies of “refugee containment” and condoning genocide.