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EU would be ready to step up its involvement in OSCE Minsk Group

25 May 2011 14:01 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Victoria Dementieva â€“ APA. An extra â‚¬1.24 billion will be made available for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP). EU will increase its support to its partners in the South and the East to nearly â‚¬7 billion over the next two years, European Commission President JosÃ© Manuel Barroso announced on Wednesday, on the day the European Commission publishes its review of the ENP, APA reports.

On Wednesday, European Commission and High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy announced a new response to a changing Neighborhood, which aims to support progress towards deep democracy, support sustainable economic and social development, pursue the process of visa facilitation, enhance EU involvement in solving protracted conflicts.

â€œThe persistence of protracted conflicts affecting a number of partner countries is a serious security challenge to the whole regionâ€, the document read. â€œThe Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other conflicts in the Middle East, the South Caucasus, the Republic of Moldova and Western Sahara continue to affect sizeable populations, feed radicalization, drain considerable local and international resources, and act as powerful impediments to reform. It would be ready to step up its involvement in formats where it is not yet represented, e.g. the OSCE Minsk Group on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflictâ€.

The European Neighborhood Policy program covers 16 countries, including Azerbaijan.