524 Egypt Threatens to Cut Ties with European Parliament

Fathi Surour, speaker of the People’s Assembly, yesterday threated to cut ties with the European Parliament and the Euro-Mediterranean Council if the European Parliament passes a resolution criticizing Egypt’s record on human rights, the government-owned Middle East News Agency reported today.

In April 2006 the European Parliament voted to make respect for human rights a priority in negotiations for Egypt on an EU-Egypt Action Plan under the European Neighborhood Policy, but EU officials have yet to indicate how they plan to do this. The January 2007 Action Plan agreement made human rights and the participation of civil society important components of the action plan, but lacked specific benchmarks.

The EU-Egypt Action Plan calls for “particular attention” to be given to “Enhanc[ing] the effectiveness of institutions entrusted with strengthening democracy and the rule of law and consolidat[ing] the independent and effective administration of justice,” and “Promot[ing] the protection of human rights in all its aspects.”

The document contains three pages of human-rights language. I don’t have time to dig up the original link, but I’ve posted the .PDF from my files here if anyone’s interested in reading the full document.

2 Comments »

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

  1. […] Zarwan, from Egypt, reports that the Egyptian parliament is threatening to cut ties with the European Parliament and the […]

    Pingback by Global Voices Online » Egypt: Parliament Threats on Cut Ties with European Parliament — January 18, 2008 #

  2. […] ????? ????? ?? ???, ???? ?? ???????? ?????? ??? ???? ???????? ?? ???????? […]

    Pingback by Global Voices ???????? » ???: ??????? ???? ???????? ?? ???????? ???????? — January 23, 2008 #

Leave a comment

You must be logged in to post a comment.

40 queries. 0.109 seconds. CMS: WordPress. Design: modified Hiperminimalist Theme.
RSS for posts and comments. Valid XHTML and CSS.