European Union (EU) submitted to Azeri Foreign Ministry the project of National action plan within the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), Mahmud Mammadguliyev, Azeri deputy foreign minister, Told Trend.
According to him, at the moment discussions are being held and the date of conducting the third round of talks on preparation of action plan within ENP will be defined in the near future.
According to the Ministry of Economic Development and Coordination Bureau of the technical assistance program to Azerbaijan of EU (Tacis), the date of conducting the meeting has been scheduled for the first half of July. The third round had to be held on May 15, but it was annulled due to disagreement upon several aspects of the document. The document didnt include the issue that the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict will be regulated on base of territorial integrity of Azerbaijan. EU took out this point from the document, but Azerbaijan was dissatisfied with this. The position of Azerbaijan was that if this point isnt included in the document, Azerbaijan will not continue that talks. Although this point remains open in the submitted document, there is an agreement with EC and the text will be formed at the next meeting.
80-90 percent of the economical part of the document has been agreed and there isnt special divergence of opinion. But there are several technical aspects, as long as the issue of Azerbaijans entrance to European Charter on small entrepreneurship and System for business registration remains open. The proposals of Azeri side in this direction were not accepted by EU.
It is intended that the third round will be the final. After an agreement is reached on the document, indicator programs will be prepared, for 2-3 years. The finance of EU will start from 2007 and it will be conducted within the two programs Tacis and MEDA. The budget of ENP for 2007-2013 is intended in amount of 15 billion euros.