Meeting minutes with The Swiss Ambassador in Cairo

On 29^th March 2018, the Council hosted the Swiss Ambassador in Cairo- Mr. Paul Garnier, to discuss the bilateral relations between two countries as well as regional and global issues of common interest. the meeting was chaired by Amb. Dr. Mounir Zaharan– the chairman, and attended by Amb. Ezzat Saad – the Director of the council, and a number of members, experts, and academicians.

The meeting began by lamenting the sadness of lose one of prominent Egyptian diplomat Ambassador Dr. Mohamed Shaker – former president of the Council and one of its founders, who passed away on Wednesday evening on 28 March 2018.The Swiss ambassador expressed his sincere condolences for him, stressing that Ambassador Shaker had a great place in Egyptian diplomacy.

The Swiss ambassador emphasized the following points in particular:

1-He confirm that the Swiss and Egyptian presidents perceived the importance of coordination between the two countries; especially that Egypt attracts foreign investments, and it already has a great share in the foreign investments, such as the agricultural, livestock, and food industries.

2- For small and medium industries, there are many Swiss companies want to enter the Egyptian market, but they need more facilities to be able to deal with its counterparts, and there made many visits by Swiss companies and Swiss officials to Egypt due to identify the investment opportunities in Egypt.

3- For Smuggled money to Swiss banks since the previous regime “ex-president Mubarak”, the ambassador emphasized that the Swiss government is reserving the balances in Swiss banks until reach a deal to make a reconciliation between the two parties, then inform the Swiss government to release these funds, as what happened recently with the Egyptian businessman Ahmed Ezz. 

4- All the above mentioned is a part of Switzerland’s foreign policy objectives, which includes enhancing the economic cooperation as well as coordination with all its partners.

5- On the Swiss experience to achieve consensus community, he stressed that Switzerland has relied on community participation by various communities and parties to build a federal state that includes different nationalities, and establishing a decentralized government which follow the central government to provide services to citizens, in addition to enhance the technical education for advanced industrial systems to contribute to the community, based on qualification, rivaling, development, improving the performance, set assessment standards, which the state’s institutions based on  to improve staff efficiency,  furthermore, set training courses to strength the experience,  the hiring standards for  leadership positions must base on the efficiency and productivity, achieve the balance between the competency and the employees level, and work on applying some reforms on all State sectors, public and private.