Egypt thwarted 1.7K illegal migration attempts over 4 years: Cabinet

CAIRO - 22 March 2019: Over the past four years, Egypt has thwarted a total of 1,725 illegal migration attempts, Egypt’s Cabinet announced on Friday in a booklet titled “Egypt…A March of Achievements” that documents all projects carried out over this period of time.

In February, Egypt announced that no illegal migration case crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe from its shores since 2016, boosting Egypt’s efforts of combating this phenomenon in the eyes of the European countries.

During the first Arab-European summit in Egypt’s Sharm el-Sheikh resort in February, heads of the member states of the Arab League and the European Union had tackled ways of curbing the illegal migration phenomenon as it was reported by Financial Times and Anadolu Agency.

On January 18, 2019, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi received a phone call from Tusk, discussing ways of combating illegal migration to European countries, according to a statement from the Egyptian Presidency.

Both Tusk, and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, whose country holds the current presidency of the EU, paid Egypt a visit in September 2018.

In his speech with Austrian Chancellor Kurz in Vienna on December 17, 2018, President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi said that Egypt prevented a total of 11,000 refugees from migrating to Europe in 2018.

President Sisi added that his country is hosting more than 5million migrants and refugees, registered and unregistered.