By Nikolas Farantouris, MEP – Euro2day –
The future of St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai is a matter of major national, ecclesiastical and diplomatic responsibility. For 1,600 years, the world’s oldest monastery has been a beacon of Orthodoxy and Christianity: a living monastic community possessing an extraordinarily important collection of manuscripts, codices and icons dating from the third century AD; a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and a location of critical geopolitical importance.
Its 1,600-year-old status has remained unchanged and has been respected, protected and guaranteed by emperors, sultans, Napoleon and the Prophet Muhammad himself.
Today, the (Greek) prime minister is presenting as a “success” an Egyptian proposal concerning the Monastery’s properties—even though there is no other contracting party and the contents of this “agreement” have not been disclosed for public scrutiny.
Egyptian sources, meanwhile, are celebrating what they describe as the “Greek side’s” acceptance of the May 2025 judgment of the Ismailia Court of Appeal, which ruled that the properties the Monastery has held and possessed as owner for 1,600 years do not belong to it.
The prime minister and foreign minister are reassuring the public that the Monastery’s “religious character” will be protected. Yet there is a deafening silence concerning ownership of its properties and their legal status.
Let us therefore examine the facts.
First and foremost: There is no agreement. There is only a draft agreement, which the abbot, Archbishop Symeon of Sinai, announced yesterday—under intense pressure—that he intends to support when he recovers and when he returns to the Monastery to take the matter further. He has been absent since 10 August.
Second: No one knows what this draft contains. But given the silence of the prime minister, who is pressing to move the matter forward, and his foreign minister on the question of ownership, we have good reason to conclude that the draft provides for the Monastery to lose ownership of its properties.
Third: The support of the Patriarchates and the Church of Greece, which the prime minister and foreign minister invoke, amounts to support for Archbishop Symeon of Sinai in negotiating an agreement that benefits, rather than harms, the Monastery. Nothing more.
Fourth: Ownership of the Monastery’s properties and the right to conduct religious worship are two different things. Preserving religious activity does not automatically safeguard the Monastery’s property, autonomy or historic rights. Surrendering and losing ownership would mean that, after 1,600 years, the monks and the Monastery would become guests on their own land.
Fifth: In 2024, Athens and Cairo developed a framework that would have recognized the Monastery’s ownership of all 71 disputed properties, guaranteed its autonomy in internal administration and established cooperation with Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
That framework was never signed because, while negotiations were still underway, the May 2025 judgment was issued—or, rather, expedited—apparently as a means of applying negotiating pressure.
What is now being advanced is a settlement that does not recognize ownership. What happened in the meantime? Why was the earlier effort not completed?
In view of all this, the misleading way in which the prime minister and foreign minister presented an “agreement” that does not exist raises serious questions.
The way in which the position of the Orthodox Churches has been portrayed raises still more questions. Their support for Archbishop Symeon in continuing the negotiations was recast as approval of the final terms of an agreement that had not been disclosed to them. Supporting an ecclesiastical leader in his efforts to negotiate is not the same as approving the contents of a specific settlement.
The matter remains unresolved
This matter cannot be concluded without the Sinai Brotherhood. The monks are not mere observers in negotiations concerning the very future of the institution they serve. Their views, institutional participation and clearly documented consent are both a substantive and a formal prerequisite for any “settlement.”
The (Greek) prime minister and foreign minister must explain what procedure was followed, how the Brotherhood was informed, when it met, whether and when it reached a decision, what authority it granted the presiding archbishop, and what guarantees were provided.
We are asking for the obvious: publication of the complete draft agreement, together with clear answers concerning the ownership status of the disputed properties, the Monastery’s autonomy and the guarantees provided by the Egyptian side.
We also demand a full account of the negotiations from 2024 to the present and of the Sinai Brotherhood’s institutional participation.
We naturally also demand answers concerning the serious allegations made by former Archbishop Damianos of Sinai and by sections of the European press, including the respected Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, which raised the possibility that the Monastery might be sacrificed as part of a broader Greek–Egyptian bargain.
It defies logic for the prime minister and foreign minister to proclaim to Greek society, as a success, a non-existent “agreement” whose terms they refuse even to disclose.
St Catherine’s Monastery is not “just another issue” that can be resolved behind closed doors and subsequently presented as a diplomatic achievement. It is an integral part of the historic presence of Hellenism and Orthodoxy in a strategically important region at a critical moment.
Protecting the Monastery requires an awareness of historical responsibility, institutional integrity and transparency—not cheap public-relations tactics intended to distract from other recent diplomatic defeats, including ratification of the Turkish–Libyan agreement.
The haste with which the prime minister and foreign minister announced and prejudged the “conclusion of an agreement” that alters a 1,600-year-old status is suspicious and manifestly disingenuous.
Instead of announcing non-existent agreements, they should support the Monastery. They did not do so in the past, they are not doing so now, and there is no indication that they intend to do so. At the very least, they should stop applying coercive pressure.
They stand exposed.
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Nikolas Farantouris is a PASOK member of the European Parliament, professor of European law in the Department of International and European Studies at the University of Piraeus, and holder of a Jean Monnet Chair in European law. He visited and stayed at St Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai from 25 to 27 September 2026.
