The EL vice-president Marisa Matias appealed yesterday to the European institutions to be alongside with the Egyptian people and to impede "the creation of a panic strategy that forces people to return home."

"We don’t need to be calm, we need to be in solidarity with the millions of citizens that, in Cairo and across the country, are fed up with hunger, unemployment and repression", stressed the Portuguese MEP elected by the Left Bloc. And, it "is not rare for European leaders to chose business instead of democracy, dictators instead of the poor people", she declared in the European Parliament plenary session in Brussels.

"European authorities seem to have learned from Tunisia and were quicker to condemn violence in Egypt" said Marie Christine Vergiat MEP from France. "Let us beware of interference and be firm on all violations of human rights. The EU has lost a lot of credibility in many countries in the region. It must be humble while being attentive to the needs of real people”.

Also according to Willy Meyer, MEP from Spain, “The EU must revisit its neighbourhood policy - we're more concerned with signing free trade agreements than human rights. The problem is that the EU is not stepping up to support the people on the streets and this applies all over the Arab world. People can no longer stand autocracy; we must support them and live up to the expectations placed on us by our neighbourhood policy”.