Pope Tawadros II, Pope of Alexandria, will meet with French president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday, during his visit to Egypt.
Macron will start a three-day official visit to Egypt on Sunday, his first visit since assuming power in France in 2017. He will hold talks with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.
The visit comes at the start of the French-Egyptian Cultural Year 2019 and also on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the inauguration of the Suez Canal.
A statement from the Coptic Orthodox Church of Egypt said that Macron will visit the St. Mark Cathedral in Abbasiya on Tuesday.
The Egyptian-French summit is expected to discuss methods to improve bilateral relations in political, military, economic and cultural fields, along with anti-terrorism cooperation and combating illegal immigration, besides discussing regional files such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the Syrian crisis and the situation in Yemen in addition to the Libyan crisis.
The talks will cover all the regional issues concerned with Egypt as well as Europe and France in particular, and will also discuss bilateral relations between the two countries, which have recently seen great development, especially on the economic and military levels.
The French president will be accompanied by a high-level delegation comprising of ministers, senior economic officials and representatives of his country’s major energy, health and infrastructure companies. Agreements and memorandums of understanding are to be signed in the areas of health, energy, transport, infrastructure and education.
Discussions will be held between some ministers of the Egyptian Economic Group and the French delegation, and an investment forum will be held and attended by a number of ministers and businessmen from both countries.
French investments in Egypt amount to 4.2 billion euros with 162 companies employing 33,000 workers, while the trade volume is 2.7 billion euros.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
