Foreign

Home page

Foreign

Belgian embassy to represent EU Presidency in Azerbaijan

07 January 2009 09:44 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Lachin Sultanovaâ€“APA. Belgian Embassy in Baku will represent EU Presidency in Azerbaijan because Czech Republic, which took over the presidency on January1, 2009, has no diplomatic mission in Baku, representation of the European Commission to Azerbaijan told APA. EU Presidency is rotated between the EU countries every six months. Czech Republic took over the EU Presidency from France and will hand it over to Sweden on July 1, 2009. Priorities of the period of Czech presidency will be economy, energy and foreign relations. It will direct its foreign policy toward integration of Western Balkans into the Europe. Czech Republic, facing with interruptions in energy supplies from Russia in the, will focus on the energy security, particularly free transportation of energy resources via EU territory, solidarity of European countries in the energy field and relations with the energy exporters and transit countries. Czech Republic will follow EU course of energy diversification and resume the discussions on the nuclear energy. The new presidency will also focus on the Eastern Partnership Program alongside with the EU enlargement. The Eastern Partnership program considers economic and political approach with six post-soviet countries (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine). Relations with Russia were presented as a third priority in this field.