Brussels, 27/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - Negotiations between the EU and Algeria are nearing conclusion, EU Ambassador to Algeria Laura Baeza has said. In a statement to the official news agency APS, following the ceremony marking the signing of the funding agreement on a water management project, she said: “We are very close to concluding negotiations and are quite hopeful they will be successful”.
Baeza stated that discussion of the list of 1,740 industrial goods, currently proving a stumbling block to talks, will be “complex and difficult”. She said that Algeria would have to prove the damage the system would cause its industrial production. “That is why progress (in the negotiations) is slow, as every time the damage has to be demonstrated product by product”, she said. She does not intend, however, to base the association agreement solely on the issue of tariff dismantling, taking the view that “lots of things have been achieved” in terms of cooperation between Algeria and the EU, APS reports. She regretted the “natural tendency to focus on what is not working”. (F.B./transl.rt)