Next round of talks on Association Agreement starts Monday

The 14th round of talks on the Association Agreement with the EU will take place in Chisinau during January 21-23. This is the first plenary round of talks this year, Info-Prim Neo reports. The talks will be held at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration and will be chaired by Moldova’s chief negotiator, Deputy Foreign Minister Natalia Gherman. The 13th plenary round was held in Brussels in November 2012. There were discussed the preamble, general objectives and principles, and the institutional, general and final provisions of the agreement. An important chapter then included the area of justice, the freedoms and security, and the economic, sector, and financial cooperation. The Association Agreement will succeed the Cooperation and Partnership Agreement signed in 1994. The Association Agreement will strengthen the relations with the EU and will contribute to the political association and economic integration, with the objective of Moldova coming gradually closer to the European Union. The talks were launched on January 12, 2010 and include four thematic blocks: the political dialogue; economic, sector and financial cooperation; justice and internal affairs, and interhuman contacts The Moldovan authorities hope that the Association Agreement will be signed until the next Eastern Partnership Summit of this November, with the European officials encouraging them.