As part of a tour to communicate with French citizens abroad on her electoral campaign to win a seat in the French national assembly as part of France's newly elected President Emmanuel Macron's Le Republic en Marche (LREM) Party, candidate Amal Amelia Lakrafi, along with the party's representative in Egypt Thibault Veck, held a press meeting on Thursday at Al-Ahram Foundation in Cairo to speak about French-Egyptian relations and the politics of a new France. Macron's newly established LREM Party has stepped up efforts to secure the votes of French nationals in the Middle East before the second round of the French legislative election set for 18 June. Lakrafi and Veck, who is also a member of the French-Egyptian Chamber of Commerce, met with Egyptian journalists, intellectuals, businessmen and university students to talk about combatting terrorism, the economy, and education under the new administration of President Macron. Lakrafi, 39, has been touring to secure the votes of the French expat community in 49 countries in the Middle East and Africa as part of her campaign leading up to the second round of voting. Lakrafi visited a number of Arab countries on her trip, and highlighted that Egypt was one of the most important on her list. “Egypt is home to 6,000 French citizens, half of whom hold Egyptian citizenship,” Lakrafi says, stressing the historically strong Egyptian-French ties. Although she has no previous political experience, Lakrafi says that she has for many years been committed to volunteering in West Africa to promote equality, education, women's rights and medical service provision. On relations with Egypt, the French candidate of Moroccan origin expressed France's commitment to fighting terrorism in cooperation with Egypt, saying she first decided to take part in her country's war against terrorism after the 2011 deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. As an entrepreneur and an intelligence and cyber security expert, Lakrafi says she has previously worked in counterterrorism. Lakrafi also affirms that education is a main focus of her campaign, and that she would push to increase the education budget and access to scholarships for her constituents. "LREM sent out two questionnaires to all three million French citizens abroad, receiving 16,000 responses that highlighted education and social security as top priorities." "Everything is now changing with LREM and this new dynamic that is outpacing France's traditional major parties and historical political players, the choice of officials in France is based on in-depth experience in the sectors they will oversee," Lakrafi says. On economic collaboration, the LREM representative in Egypt and member of the French-Egyptian chamber of commerce Thibault Veck affirmed that enhancing economic cooperation between France and Egypt is one of the main objectives of the party and the chamber. "There are a lot of French companies that invested in Egypt that are a facing a lot of challenges that are not limited to the French, but to foreign investors in general,” Veck said, adding that “the Egyptian government embarked on a courageous reform programme of which we are waiting to see the results in boosting economic ties.” “When the French people elected Macron, they voted for an open France and not a closed country, and being open means to be 100 percent pro-European and seeking a more open and stronger union that will positively reflect on Europe, the Middle East and Egypt.”
