When a delegation of MEPs visited Cairo last week to deepen ties with Egypt, the trip underscored a partnership now worth €7.4 billion and marked by last October's first leaders' summit. Yet for Greek MEP Nikos Papandreou, one issue cast a long shadow: the systematic persecution of Egypt's Baha'i community.
Papandreou, who met with Baha'is during the visit, says their plight reveals a gap between the EU's stated values and its strategic investments. The EU-Egypt Strategic and Comprehensive Partnership, formalised in March 2024, includes a commitment to “promote rule of law, democracy and human rights.” But for Egypt's several thousand Baha'is, those words ring hollow.
A Community Without Legal Existence
The Baha'i Faith, founded in the nineteenth century, counts millions of followers worldwide. In Egypt, its adherents have been part of society since the 1860s, contributing as doctors, teachers, artists, and engineers—including the celebrated modernist painter Hussein Amin Bicar. Yet they enjoy no legal recognition whatsoever.
Egypt's legal system only recognises Islam, Christianity, and Judaism as Abrahamic faiths, and even then only partially. Some Christian denominations are recognised; others are not. The country's roughly ten million Christians face real and sometimes violent persecution, but they can worship, maintain churches, register marriages, and bury their dead according to their faith. Baha'is have none of these rights.
“Their exclusion is not merely social hostility but legal non-existence,” Papandreou writes. “They fall outside recognition altogether, and with it outside the ordinary machinery of citizenship.”
The consequences are severe. Baha'is struggle to obtain national ID cards, are denied marriage licenses, cannot bury loved ones in recognised cemeteries, and face harassment and surveillance by security services. At the only Baha'i cemetery still in their possession in Cairo, community members told Papandreou they now have to bury the dead upright because the government refuses to grant additional burial land. Married couples cannot name each other as beneficiaries in legal documents, and children are barred from inheritance. Those without ID cards cannot study, work, or complete national service.
International Record and a Constitutional Promise
The persecution is well documented. In February 2026, three UN reports—from the High Commissioner for Human Rights and two Special Rapporteurs—called for an end to the discrimination. Egypt's own constitution guarantees freedom of belief. President Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi has stated that “the right to believe in any faith… is absolute and should be protected and respected.” The country's 2021 National Human Rights Strategy pledges to protect human rights.
Yet a 1960 presidential decree by Gamal Abdul Nasser dissolved Baha'i institutions and confiscated their properties and cemeteries. Fatwas from Al-Azhar, the highest Sunni authority, have reinforced the marginalisation.
Papandreou argues that addressing these challenges does not require radical change. “All Egypt needs is to ensure that peaceful religious groups are afforded equal legal rights—reaffirming its own laws and statements,” he says. With Cairo currently drafting its next five-year human rights strategy for 2026–2031, and having just taken a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, the moment is ripe for action. Baha'i recognition could be written into the new strategy while its contents are still being decided.
The EU's leverage is considerable. The bloc has pledged billions to Egypt for migration control, as reported in EU Pledges Billions to Egypt for Migration Control, Cairo Demands More. But Papandreou insists that friendship must include frank dialogue. “Since we are friends with Egypt, and because I valued my time with our hosts, we in Europe can and must be open with our friends,” he writes.
Expanding protections for minorities, he adds, strengthens social cohesion. “When individuals feel their rights are respected and identities acknowledged, they can contribute to society in positive ways, which the Egyptian Baha'is told me is all they want.”
