The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, will take part in the EU-Arab League summit, which is set to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh from 24-25 February, said the Director General for Asia, Middle East and South America affairs at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, Claudia Warning.

Warning said in an interview with MENA news agency that President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi raised a number of key issues during the talks with Merkel at the Munich Security Conference, in which he reflected on the distinguished relations binding the two countries.

The German official highlighted the development of the economic and trade relations between Cairo and Berlin, adding that the volume of trade between them reached almost €6bn in 2017.

The summit will be the first official meeting of all the EU and Arab League leaders in order to boost their relations.

The spokesperson of the German government, Steffen Seibert, said on Monday that a wide range of issues will be discussed during the summit, including multilateralism, trade, investments, migration, security, and the situation in the region.

Seibert added that during the EU-Arab League ministerial meeting, which preceded the summit, the parties confirmed the importance of a close partnership in order to address the common challenges.

The ministerial meeting took place on 4 February and aimed at strengthening the European-Arab partnership and setting the stage for the upcoming EU-Arab League summit.

The two-day summit will gather, for the first time, the heads of the member states of the Arab League and the EU. It will be co-chaired between President Al-Sisi and the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk.

In September 2018, the former spokesperson of Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed Abu Zeid, announced that an EU-Arab summit will be held next year in Egypt and will focus on the cooperation between the two regions on a general level.