Azerbaijan, EU to realize new twinning projects

Azerbaijan and the European Union will start implementation of seven more twinning projects in the near future, said Malena Mard.

The Head of the EU Delegation to Baku announced about this when addressing a conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of launching EU’s twinning projects in Azerbaijan on April 7.

Azerbaijan is a leader in the Eastern Partnership region in cooperation in twinnings with the EU, said Mard while talking to reporters.

She noted that the EU has implemented or is implementing 45 twinnings in Azerbaijan.

“We are celebrating the 10th anniversary of twinning in Azerbaijan … and I think the results have been very positive for the EU and Azerbaijan,” Mard told reporters on April 7.

She said twinnings have very strong and good results in the strengthening cooperation in different areas. “We are benefiting both the EU and Azerbaijan from our colleagues gaining knowledge from each other about very specific areas,” Mard said.

The head of the EU Delegation went on to add that at least a thousand of European Union’s expats have been working in Azerbaijan in twinning projects of different capacity during the last five years.

Mard stressed that Azerbaijan and the EU have a very strong base of cooperation on very many different areas besides twinnings: in statistics, environment, social issues, safety, constructing standards.

Speaking about holding of the next round of talks on the Azerbaijan-EU new strategic partnership agreement, Mard said that the meeting will be held within the next two weeks and most likely to take place in Baku.

“We are very happy with the visit of President Ilham Aliyev to Brussels which was the start of the negotiation on the new legal basis of cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan. And we hope within a couple of weeks we will have another meeting,” Mard said.

She noted that the both sides are very ambitious about this meeting and the experts from Azerbaijan and the EU are very busy preparing for this round of negotiation.

The new agreement should replace the 1996 partnership and cooperation agreement and should better take account of the shared objectives and challenges the EU and Azerbaijan face today.

The agreement will follow the principles endorsed in the 2015 review of the European Neighborhood Policy and offer a renewed basis for political dialogue and mutually beneficial cooperation between the EU and Azerbaijan.

Azerbaijani Deputy Economy Minister Sahil Babayev, who also addressed the event, said that investments of European countries in Azerbaijan's economy exceeded $20 billion in 10 years.

Babayev noted that the mentioned amount of investments make up for 45 percent of all funds invested in Azerbaijan over this period.

“The EU countries are our main investors. Over 10 years, European countries have invested about $20 billion in our economy, including nearly $3 billion in the non-oil sector,” he said.

“We have extensive economic cooperation with the EU countries. European states are the main trade partners of Azerbaijan. In JanuaryFebruary 2017, 42 percent of Azerbaijan’s trade turnover [$866.6 million, according to the State Customs Committee] accounted for the EU countries,” Babayev added.

The deputy economy minister noted that Azerbaijan and the EU have the potential to expand the current cooperation.