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High-ranking European Commission official meets Deputy Prime Minister Kabyakow

Hugues Mingarelli, the visiting deputy director general of the European Commission's Directorate-General for External Relations, on November 5 met with Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Kabyakow.

Mr. Mingarelli said at the meeting that the European plans to maintain a permanent dialogue with the Belarusian authorities in the next half a year.

“We’ll do everything possible to use the next six months for the development of cooperation in sectors such as energy, transportation, environmental protection, and customs affairs,” he said. “We also intend to initiate cooperation with Belarus in three new areas. These are: product quality and standardization, financial management, and food security. We also could take steps to make it easier for people to move across the border, and to support people-to-people contacts.”

Mr. Mingarelli said that the European Commission has a serious political intention and the will to develop relations with Belarus so that the country will eventually be able to get fully involved in the European Neighborhood Policy.

Mr. Kabyakow said that the Belarusian government “realizes the need to continue working on the so-called homework stipulated by the EU-Belarus dialogue and expects the European Union to make adequate moves in response to that.”

“Belarus is interested in full-scale and pragmatic cooperation with EU with an emphasis on the economic dimension,” he said.
“The recent steps by Belarus and the EU open a new page in bilateral relations,” Mr. Kabyakow said. “In our opinion, these steps were timely, as the level of external economic relations speaks for itself.” In particular, he said, the European Union accounts for 32 percent of Belarus’ foreign trade and 44 percent of Belarus’ exports.

“Barriers to cooperation between Belarus and the EU have recently started being removed and we hope that this process will gain momentum,” the vice premier said.

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