Egypt shows strong leadership, progress in transport system: Swedish Min.

STOCKHOLM – 20 February 2020: Swedish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Thomas Eneroth praised the effort exerted by Egypt to upgrade the transport system, and apply road safety measures over the past years.

“I am impressed by the progress made now in Egypt, since I was in Egypt last time 10 years ago, I realized that there are a lot of things happening now,” Eneroth said in an interview with Egypt Today on the sidelines of the 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety that is held in Stockholm.

Eneroth said that he had a very good meeting on Wednesday with the Egyptian Minister of Transport in Stockholm, and that they had a lot of good ideas to implement in terms of road safety, which he believed would be a very good start between the two countries.


Swedish Transport and Infrastructure Minister Thomas Eneroth with Egypt Today's reporter Nourhan Magdi

“There are lots of things we can do together and we are already doing together, Egypt has shown that by strong leadership they can manage to change to development and now they have quite positive development when it comes to road safety,” he added.

Swedish Transport System cited investments that Egypt managed to attract into the transport system as one of the main achievements that impressed him, adding that “we realized that investments in infrastructure is needed and if combined with also investments in public transport that’s even more important.”

And on the Swedish perspective, Eneroth said “we work on the Vision Zero Academy, which is our way of sharing our experience and also funding programs.”

The minister also explained that changing transport system to meet climate change is made possible because of challenges in the coming years; however, using that change is also important to maintain efficient transport system and make roads safer.

He went on saying that they are working on electrifying transport system, and installing new devices to make safer transport system, “and this technique we can share and discuss together with Egypt and other countries.”

He added that both countries will continue to have good relations and experience, stressing that he always highlighted the importance of multilateral agreements not ending up in a discussion.

During the conference, Minister Tomas Eneroth urged decision makers to adopt an action plan to allow children live a safe life, and reduce deaths figures on the roads.

He also presented the ‘Stockholm Declaration’, which was prepared on the basis of the Moscow Declaration of 2009 and the Brasilia Declaration of 2015, UN General Assembly and World Health Assembly resolutions. The declaration aims to connect road safety to the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Egypt was part of the United Nation’s decade of action program that started 2011 with an ambitious target to halve global number of deaths from road accidents by 2020. The country embarked on an extensive local program that included: toughening punishment on traffic violators, building new road networks, renovating bridges and launching drug-driving tests.

The Cabinet’s Information Center announced that Egypt jumped 89 places in roads quality rankings by The Global Economy from the 118th in 2014 to the 29th in 2019.

The 3rd Global Ministerial Conference on Road Safety kicked off in Stockholm, Sweden Wednesday, where around 1,700 delegates from 140 countries are attending to share successes and lessons from implementation of the Global Plan for the Decade of Action for Road Safety 2011-2020.