EU-Georgia Cooperation Council to Be Held in Brussels
Civil Georgia, Tbilisi / 11 Dec.'13 / 13:08

Georgia and EU will hold annual cooperation council meeting in Brussels on December 12, the first one since Georgia initialed Association Agreement with the EU at the Vilnius Eastern Partnership summit last month.

“This is an important meeting, because it will determine to a certain extent tasks that we have to implement after the Vilnius summit,” said Foreign Minister Maia Panjikidze, who leads the Georgian delegation, which also includes state minister for European and Euro-Atlantic integration, Alexi Petriashvili, and other officials.

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius, whose country holds EU’s rotating presidency, as well as European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighbourhood Policy Štefan Füle will be participating in the meeting.

Speaking before the European Parliament on December 10 during discussions of outcome of the Vilnius summit, which focused mainly on developments in Ukraine, Štefan Füle said that the European Commission is “strongly determined” to signed the Association Agreement, also including deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, with Georgia and Moldova by autumn 2014.

He said that the EU has to be “more strategic and resolute.”

“Could we have done more than repeating that we welcome the European aspiration” of Eastern Partnership countries? Füle asked and continued: “I think, the time has come for us to be more strategic, and if we are saying ‘A’ and we want to transform that part of Europe, then we should be ultimately ready to say ‘B’, that we are ready to use the most appropriate instrument we have for transformation. The light at the end of the tunnel is missing.”

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