Brussels, 31/01/2014 (Agence Europe) - On 30 January, a senior official said that technical experts' meetings will take place in February and March in order to progress on the new bilateral agreement between the EU and Russia. If all the elements for progress are there, “we will be happy to announce - perhaps at the next summit [in June] - that we are going forwards”. In his opinion, the intention of the Russian side at the EU-Russia summit on 28 January was to try to have a few decisions on this new agreement. However, the European side reportedly said that it was necessary to assess if all the ingredients for a successful negotiation were there - hence the technical discussions that have been set up. The EU has long insisted on having solid components on trade, investment and energy, the official stated.
According to this official, Putin reportedly suggested at the summit that the agreement could possibly be finalised in 2014 and that it could perhaps even set the objective of establishing the area from Lisbon to Vladivostok by 2020 for having an “EU customs union agreement”. “We answered that we would like to say the same thing but that principles must be applied”, the official said. He recalled that two out of three members of the customs union are not members of the World Trade Organisation (Belarus and Kazakhstan) and that the situation is therefore “still far from meeting requirements and expectations”.
“We have a certain number of bases for what could be a successful next summit”, the senior official stated. The next summit will take place in Sochi (Russia) on 3 June.
As regards the organisation of the summit, which had a restricted formula, the official revealed that the trilateral meeting between the presidents was only decided upon at the last moment by the two European presidents, and accepted by Putin. (CG/transl.fl)