EU chief Ursula von der Leyen and the leaders of Italy, Greece and Belgium head to Egypt this weekend with the aim of replicating deals already sealed with Tunisia, Mauritania and other countries to stem flows of irregular migrants.

That strategy is being reinforced as the European Union prepares for June elections for its Parliament that surveys predict will see a surge in support for far-right, anti-immigration parties.

Egypt, mired in a deep economic crisis, borders two ongoing conflicts.

One is Gaza, where the Israeli military has pushed much of the population up against the border with Egypt. That is testing Cairo’s refusal to allow Palestinians in — which, if it did, could expand the regional consequences of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The other is Sudan, prey to warring factions and under the spectre of famine.

Egypt already hosts around nine million migrants and refugees, including four million displaced Sudanese and 1.5 million Syrian migrants, according to the UN migration agency IOM.

Egypt’s finance minister, Mohamed Maait, has spoken of EU aid coming of around $5 billion to $6 billion (4.5 billion to 5.5 billion euros).

Von der Leyen, who travelling with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo, is to announce the aid figure on Sunday in Cairo.

‘EU’s policeman‘

The agreement is expected to be along the same lines as a multimillion-euro pact announced in July with Tunisia.

The accords, based on a costlier template worked out with Turkey in 2016, have the EU providing a packet of aid and investment in return for commitments that the countries halt irregular migrant departures and accept those who are sent back.

“Generally, migration deals with third countries are not very popular in those countries because they end up being sort of seen as the EU’s policeman… so the EU has started doing broader agreements in which migration is just one element among others,” said Florian Trauner, a researcher on migration issues at Brussels’ VUB university.

The European Commission insists that the EU and Egypt cooperate in a range of areas.

“There is a sort of a comprehensive dimension to our relationship with Egypt, which needs to be underlined and on which we will be coming back this Sunday,” commission spokesman Eric Mamer said Friday.

But “there is also, of course, cooperation in the area also of migration, of security in view of the situation in the region,” he said.

Reducing irregular migration to the European Union has become a priority for Brussels since inflows of more than a million people a year in 2015 and 2016, many of them Syrians fleeing civil war, that were greatly reduced with the Turkey deal.

A cost-of-living squeeze and high inflation over the past couple of years – spurred by soaring energy costs from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – have also fuelled anti-immigrant rhetoric in several EU nations.

Tougher border measures have been introduced in EU frontline states such as Italy — where Meloni helms a far-right government — and Greece, which has been accused by rights groups and charities of dangerous pushbacks of migrants.

Brussels has also sealed a controversial deal to train and equip the coast guard of Libya, despite documented abuses of migrants in that country.

Last week, the EU struck a “migration partnership” with Mauritania involving mobilising 210 million euros and a cooperation arrangement with the EU’s border and coast guard agency Frontex.

 

Criticism

Despite EU officials holding up the Tunisia deal as a model for further accords, that agreement had a rocky start, shot through with Brussels-Tunis tensions.

Even in the European Union it has been criticised, with European Parliament lawmakers on Thursday challenging the way the commission was doing the accounting on 150 million euros in support for Tunisia, where they said rule of law was deteriorating.

In a letter to von der Leyen ahead of her Cairo trip, one French MEP who scrutinised EU ties with Egypt, Mounir Satouri, also expressed alarm about the “catastrophic” human rights and democracy situation in that country.

Catherine Woollard, director of the advocacy group the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, slammed agreements “concluded with repressive governments,” calling them “attempts to externalise responsibility”.

The commission has defended the tactic, even if Mamer recognised that the EU executive was not always happy with the situation in countries it has struck deals with.

“Does that mean that we should break off all relations? Would that actually lead to an improvement in the situation? Or should we try to find a way of working with those countries in order to improve the situation on the ground?” he said.

The long-term effectiveness of such deals is also in question.

While Turkey hosts more than three million Syrian refugees, its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has not hesitated to instrumentalise migration issues to pressure the EU.

For Tunisia, recent figures show a dip in departures of irregular migrants, but in Libya there is a small rise.

The IOM says different factors could explain those numbers and it was too soon to draw a link to the EU-Tunisia accord.

The Mediterranean remains an especially perilous route to Europe, with around 2,500 deaths or disappearances registered last year.