EU has set goal to provide visa-free travel for Azerbaijani citizens: EU Commissioner

European Union Commissioner for Trade and European Neighbourhood Policy Benita Ferrero-Waldner issued an article “Eastern Partnership is a major success story” before the meeting of EU and Eastern Partnership foreign ministers on Dec. 8.

“It wasn’t even a year ago, that I presented the proposal for this policy, based to ideas from several sides including the Polish and Swedish governments. This policy literally had a number of fathers but I am proud to say that I am the mother of this baby that has already grown considerably. Let me say, our baby has done very well and has by now become a nice teenager. Since the founding summit on 7 May in Prague, we have managed to work on both components of the Eastern Partnership – the bilateral and the multilateral tracks," she said.

"Bilaterally, we are moving ahead to implement the promise made in the Eastern Partnership which is the offer to negotiate Association Agreements with all partner countries provided the necessary conditions are met. We are working out together how we can intensify and fine-tune our assistance based on the specific needs of your country so these conditions can be fulfilled," she said in her article.

"Such Association agreements will for instance considerably expand our scope of cooperation and also include far reaching free trade arrangements. While we are already negotiating with Ukraine and will launch the negotiations with Moldova in the beginning of January 2010, we are about to finalize the proposal for negotiation directives for the countries of the Caucasus," the article said.

"At the same time we have also set ourselves the goal of improving the possibilities for citizens of Azerbaijan to travel to the European Union through first visa facilitation and as a long term goal visa free travel regimes”, said Benita Ferrero-Waldner in her article.

“This is promising and until leaving this most important legacy to my successor, I will continue to put my full political weight behind the further growing of this Eastern Partnership which is beneficial to all of us”, she said.

/APA/