On Monday, Italian media said that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, on the sidelines of the COP27 climate summit, for about an hour and a quarter.

According to reports, Meloni discussed the human rights situation in Egypt with Sisi and emphasized her government’s vital concern about the cases of Giulio Regeni, an Italian University of Cambridge graduate who was abducted and tortured to death in Egypt in 2016, and Patrick Zaki, an Egyptian student at the Università di Bologna. The latter was detained for a long time in Egypt and released in December 2021 but is still on trial. They also discussed energy supplies, the climate crisis, and migration.

The Egyptian Presidency issued a statement saying that they discussed the latest developments related to the security of the Mediterranean and agreed on the need to work to preserve Libya’s unity and stability. The two parties also discussed ways to develop economic, trade and investment relations, in addition to cooperation in energy, essential areas of partnership between the two countries during the past years. Sisi affirmed Egypt’s readiness to cooperate with Italy to combat irregular migration.