EU’s Fule to travel to Baku
By Sara Rajabova
European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule will visit Azerbaijan in early September.
Fule will travel to Azerbaijan on September 8-9 to discuss the EU-Azerbaijan cooperation with Azerbaijani, the EU mission in Baku told Trend Agency.
The goal of the European commissioner's visit is to take part at an informal meeting of the EU Eastern Partnership member countries' foreign ministers, to be held in Baku.
Azerbaijan was the initiator of holding this meeting.
Apart from the Eastern Partnership member countries' foreign ministers informal meeting on September 8, Baku will also host an informal meeting of the Eastern Partnership member countries' energy and economy ministers on September 9.
The EU and Azerbaijan are maintaining relations under the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, which was signed in 1996 and came into force in 1999.
Since then the PCA has provided the legal framework for EU-Azerbaijan bilateral relations in the areas of political dialogue, trade, investment, economic, legislative and cultural cooperation.
Azerbaijan is also included in the EU program on "Eastern Partnership" adopted on the initiative of Poland and Sweden and approved at the EU summit in Brussels in 2008.
The goal of the program is the rapprochement between the EU and Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Armenia, Moldova, Georgia, Belarus. The program envisages significant increase in the level of political interaction, large integration of former Soviet republics into EU economy, increasing the volume of financial aid to them and strengthening the energy security.