Fifteen press freedom and human rights organizations wrote to the European Union on Monday, June 8, warning that Egypt has made no meaningful progress on human rights, democracy, or the rule of law, despite a €5 billion macro-financial assistance package the EU tied to those reforms. The letter lands five working days before the 11th EU-Egypt Association Council meeting on June 15 in Luxembourg, where EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty are scheduled to take stock of a Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership launched in March 2024. The Committee to Protect Journalists and Front Line Defenders lead the 15-name signatory bloc.
The coalition asked Brussels to use the Luxembourg meeting to press Egypt on enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, the jailing of journalists and the failure to investigate mass graves in North Sinai, and to reflect those concerns in the European Commission’s first annual report on the 2025 macro-financial assistance operation. “Unless the EU and Member States press Egypt to improve its human rights situation, that ‘golden age’ risks becoming one of deepening repression and instability,” the 15-organization joint statement to the EU said, in language aimed at the Council and the European Parliament.
What the 15 Groups Are Asking the EU
The signatories span Egyptian, regional and global groups: the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, CIVICUS, EuroMed Rights, CNCD-11.11.11, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, ANKH Association, EgyptWide for Human Rights, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), PEN International, the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Front Line Defenders.
In substance, the groups asked Brussels to ensure that human rights concerns feature prominently in the European Commission’s first annual report on the 2025 macro-financial assistance operation, the report that informs whether Egypt stays on track for further disbursements. They also asked the Association Council meeting itself to press Egypt for what they called genuine reform, not the “largely symbolic” steps Egyptian authorities have taken since the partnership was launched in March 2024.
The letter singled out enforced disappearance and torture, mass arbitrary detention, the repression of peaceful protest and dissent, and the treatment of journalists, human rights defenders, scholars, and religious and sexual minorities. It also pointed to the absence of any investigation into mass graves in North Sinai that the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights first publicly documented in September 2025.
Unless the EU and Member States press Egypt to improve its human rights situation, that “golden age” risks becoming one of deepening repression and instability.
That passage appears in the joint statement the 15 organizations released ahead of the June 15 meeting, in language aimed directly at EU institutions and member-state capitals.
Ahmed Douma’s Return to Prison
Ahmed Douma, an Egyptian political commentator and poet whose work has appeared in The New Arab, Arabi21 and the independent platform Sotour, was sentenced on June 3 to one year in prison for writing about conditions inside Egypt’s detention system. A Cairo court convicted him of publishing “false news and rumors inside and outside the country that would disturb public order” over social media posts and an article for the London-based news website The New Arab, the June 3 sentencing of Ahmed Douma showed.
CPJ’s Regional Director Sara Qudah called the verdict “a stark violation of the right to free and safe expression” and said “no journalist should face prison for sharing firsthand experiences or expressing critical opinions.” Douma’s case moved fast. He was arrested on April 6 at the Supreme State Security Prosecution headquarters, held in pretrial detention for nearly two months, and convicted despite Article 71 of the Egyptian Constitution, which states that “no custodial sanction shall be imposed for crimes committed by way of publication.” Douma had already spent about 10 years in prison for his political activism before a presidential pardon released him in August 2023, after which he faced a travel ban, denial of official documents and six interrogations over his writing.
The sentencing of Ahmed Douma for writing about prison conditions is a stark violation of the right to free and safe expression. No journalist should face prison for sharing firsthand experiences or expressing critical opinions.
The response came from Sara Qudah, CPJ’s regional director for the Middle East and North Africa, in the organization’s June 3 statement on the verdict.
A Pattern That Reaches Beyond the Press
Press freedom is the most visible edge of a wider crackdown the letter lays out. At least 18 journalists were behind bars in Egypt in 2025, the same figure CPJ and the front-line groups cite, keeping the country among the world’s most prolific jailers of reporters for another year. The 2025 review period also brought fresh arrests of journalists’ family members in apparent retaliation for their relatives’ work.
Outside the press gallery, the list of those affected is long. The letter says the use of enforced disappearance and torture, sometimes leading to death, remains “systematic and widespread,” with near-total impunity for the security bodies involved. Around 6,000 individuals were referred to trial before terrorism court circuits in an eight-month window between late 2024 and May 2025, many after prolonged pretrial detention. The Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have each separately documented patterns of mass arbitrary arrest in the same period.
On May 25, Egyptian police arrested pharmacist Hanan Altantawy and lawyers Mohamed Abu al-Dayyar and Wafaa al-Masry, all members of the informal group the Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience, after they helped organize a public exhibition in Cairo titled “They don’t belong in prison.” Abu al-Dayyar remains in pretrial detention; the other two were released on bail, per the account of the May 25 arrests and prosecutions of Egyptian rights defenders. The right to discuss religion online has come under similar pressure in the same period, a pattern tracked in the recent religious expression crackdown in Egypt.
The signatories also pointed to mass graves in North Sinai that the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights first documented in a September 22, 2025 report titled “Killed in Cold Blood,” produced with Forensic Architecture. The report identified a mass grave near the city of Arish that it says contains more than 300 bodies of civilians killed extrajudicially and secretly buried, with the Egyptian army allegedly overseeing and concealing the site for years. Egyptian authorities have not opened a public investigation; the Foundation said it had offered to withhold the report in exchange for an independent fact-finding committee and never received a response.
- 18 journalists in prison in Egypt in 2025
- 6,000 individuals referred to terrorism court circuits between late 2024 and May 2025
- 300+ bodies in the mass grave near Arish, North Sinai
- 15 press freedom and human rights organizations signed the joint letter
The ‘Golden Age’ That Has Not Materialized
Two and a half years ago, EU Neighborhood Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi described the period of EU-Egypt relations as a “golden age.” The phrase has aged badly. The June 8 letter argues that, if anything, Egypt’s human rights situation has deteriorated since the EU-Egypt Partnership was launched in March 2024, and that the EU’s public statements have frequently appeared to endorse a reform narrative that has produced little on the ground.
The letter points to 2025 parliamentary elections that it says took place in a closed public sphere, with a parliament the groups say is little more than a “rubber-stamp” for the executive. It also flags a constitutional amendment process that the signatories argue may end presidential term limits, and a 2024 Code of Criminal Procedures, decried by UN experts and independent civil society, that the Egyptian president referred back to parliament; parliament postponed implementation by a year, and the president subsequently issued the code in substantially the same form. The same period has also seen documented cases of transnational repression of Egyptians abroad, including on EU soil, a trend mapped in how Egypt’s repression reaches activists abroad.
Some of the country’s most prominent prisoners of conscience have rotated through the same door. Alaa Abdelfattah was released in 2025 after years of arbitrary detention, the letter notes, “but many prisoners of conscience or political prisoners have been newly detained, or re-arrested after their release such as Ahmed Douma, Ismail Alexandrani and Sayed Moshagheb.” PEN International’s executive director, Romana Cacchioli, said the poet’s return to prison was “a clear example of Egypt’s freedom of expression crisis, whereby authorities respond to peaceful criticism with vicious repression.”
What’s on the Agenda in Luxembourg
June 15 is the date of the 11th EU-Egypt Association Council, held this time in Luxembourg and co-chaired by Kaja Kallas and Egypt’s Badr Abdelatty, per the published agenda for the June 15 Association Council on the Council of the EU website. The meeting is framed as a stocktaking exercise: review of the Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership launched in March 2024, and a discussion of progress across its six pillars, namely political relations, economic stability, trade and investment, migration and mobility, security, and demography and human capital.
It will also, in the Council’s own words, provide “an opportunity to discuss global issues of common interest and the regional situation,” with Middle East and North Africa dynamics on the table, building on the first EU-Egypt summit held in Brussels in October 2025, when the European Council’s António Costa, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi met in person. The Association Council’s most consequential product for the rights groups may be the European Commission’s first annual implementation report on the 2025 macro-financial assistance operation, the assessment the European Parliament and Council will read before deciding on the next disbursement.
The Stakes for the €5 Billion Package
How forcefully that language is reflected in the EU’s report is the question the 15 organizations are trying to shape. They have asked the European Commission and the European External Action Service to “better reflect this alarming situation” in the assessment of the political precondition, and to convey rule of law, democracy and human rights issues “more forcefully” than they did in the Information Note the Commission circulated to the Parliament and Council in January 2026, when the first instalment of the operation was disbursed.
The groups are not asking Brussels to walk away. The signed statement frames the bet the EU has placed on partnership as recoverable, but only if pressure arrives. “Public expressions of support that ignore the reality of ongoing abuses risk emboldening the authorities to commit further violations and may render the EU complicit in the serious abuses being committed in the country,” the letter says.
The €5 billion macro-financial assistance figure, equivalent to roughly US$5.75 billion, was announced in March 2024 alongside the elevation of EU-Egypt relations to a Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership. The first tranche was disbursed in January 2026, on terms the letter’s authors say the Commission should revisit when it files the first annual report.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the EU-Egypt Association Council?
The Association Council is the senior-level body that oversees the EU’s 2004 Association Agreement with Egypt, with a meeting roughly once a year. The June 15 session in Luxembourg is the 11th in the series, co-chaired by EU High Representative Kaja Kallas and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.
How much money is at stake and what are the conditions?
EU support under the Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership is anchored by a €5 billion (about US$5.75 billion) macro-financial assistance package, within a broader financial and investment envelope running through 2027. The political precondition attached to the funds requires Egypt to take “concrete and credible steps” on democratic mechanisms, the rule of law and human rights, language the Commission’s January 2026 Information Note used to justify the first disbursement.
Who signed the joint letter?
Fifteen organizations led by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Front Line Defenders, and including the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, the Egyptian Front for Human Rights, the Egyptian Human Rights Forum, CIVICUS, EuroMed Rights, CNCD-11.11.11, the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), the Law and Democracy Support Foundation, ANKH Association, EgyptWide for Human Rights, the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT), PEN International and the Sinai Foundation for Human Rights.
What is the first annual MFA report?
It is the European Commission’s first annual implementation report on the 2025 macro-financial assistance operation for Egypt, which the Commission sends to the European Parliament and Council. The report is meant to assess whether Egypt has met the political precondition, and it will inform decisions on future disbursements from the package.
What could the EU do in Luxembourg on June 15?
The 15 organizations have asked the EU and its member states to publicly press Egypt on enforced disappearance, arbitrary detention, the situation of the 18 jailed journalists, the May 25 arrests of Committee to Defend Prisoners of Conscience members, and the lack of investigation into the Sinai mass graves, and to ensure those concerns feature prominently in the Commission’s first MFA implementation report.
