Francois Hollande was invited by Egyptian president Al-Sissi for the inauguration of the new Suez Canal on August 6.The president arrived on the presidential yacht “El Horriva,” which was the first yacht to cross the Suez in 1969 and is the seventh largest in the wo
rld. Other heads of state and government arrived on boats crossing the new area of the canal (Alexis Tsipras, Matteo Renzi, Dmitri Medvedev, the Emir of Kuwait and the king of Bahrein.) The construction will make room for double the traffic by 2023 by allowing 100 more boats to pass through.
The French submarines FREMM sold to Egypt in February were honored and defense minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accompanied Francois Hollande to watch the flyby of Rafale planes. Hollande described the French-Egyptian relationship as “a historical and deep friendship.” Egypt has purchased nearly 5 billion euros worth of arms from France since the beginning of 2015 and intends to buy four ships for 1 billion euros.
Egypt and France are both engaged in combatting the Islamic State. Francois Hollande counted on his journey to establish his international presence, just as he did in Saudi Arabia last May. The first developer of the canal was French diplomat Ferdinand de Lesseps and it was “unimaginable” that France would not have attended the inauguration
