Cairo - Mubasher: The President of Egypt, Abdel Fatah El-Sisi has met on Saturday with the European Union (EU) commissioner for migration, home affairs, and citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos.

The meeting was also attended by the Egyptian minister of foreign affairs, Sameh Shoukry, and the minister of immigration and Egyptian expatriate affairs, Nabila Makram.

During the meeting, the Egyptian president assured Egypt keenness to enhance cooperation with the EU in all fields, including combating illegal immigration, according to the Egyptian Presidency spokesperson Bassam Rady.

President El-Sisi stressed the need to deal with this challenge through a comprehensive strategy that deals with all of its causes.

Controlling illegal immigration cannot only be done through security measurements, but with resolving regional conflicts and supporting economic development to improve quality of life and the standard of living for all people, El-Sisi explained.

The president although laid out the efforts by the Egyptian government to stop illegal immigration, which lead to zero cases since 2016 until now.

El-Sisi also noted that Egypt is hosting millions of refugees, who are completely integrated in the Egyptian society, without having any kind of refugee camps, living freely and enjoying all services, in the same way that Egyptian citizens do.

Meanwhile, Dimitris Avramopoulos pointed to the EU willingness to enhance the cooperation with Egypt, as one of the major EU partners in the Middle East due to its historic value for the entire region.

Avramopoulos also praised all the positive changes Egypt has been seeing in the last years, expressed admiration to the role Egypt is playing to help protect the Middle East, the and Europe.

The commissioner noted that the reason behind his visit is to launch cooperation between Egypt and the EU in the immigration field and the exchange of intelligence and information.