CAIRO: Secretary-General of the Egyptian-European Partnership Gamal Bayoumi announced that the volume of Egyptian exports to European Union countries increased four times from three billion dollars before the start of the partnership program and the Egyptian-European Neighborhood Policy in 2004 to $12 billion dollars, as of 2009 statistics recently reported. Bayoumi revealed during a speech last Wednesday at the opening of the annual conference of the partnership, which is held this year under the title “Five years of twinning and support capabilities,” that there are about “27 new projects for twinning ready for implementation during the next few months with the support of the European Union with 37 million Euros.” He said that the conference was of a particular importance this year after five years of the start of the European Partnership Agreement with the Ministry of International Cooperation funded by the European Union at 97 million Euros (700 million Egyptian pounds). “The program since it was launched , worked on 19 projects for institutional twinning and technical support and there are about 10 other projects currently under study,” he said. “And the Program also suggested more than 200 exchange information and technical support areas where around 74 processes have been carried out so far” as part of the EU-Egypt partnership. BM
