OREANDA-NEWS. March 11, 2010. Brussels hosted a plenary meeting that summed up the eighth round of negotiations on the New Russia-EU Framework Agreement. Vladimir Chizhov, Permanent Representative to the EU, headed the Russian delegation, and the European Commission’s Director General for External Relations Joao Vale de Almeida the EU delegation.

Textual harmonization of the future agreement’s provisions had continued during the round. The parties were generally appreciative of the work done, and underscored the common orientation towards ensuring the proper quality of the agreement.

In the section on collaborative political dialogue and external security, tangible progress had been made in harmonizing articles related to the general goals of cooperation, disarmament and nonproliferation, and security and defense interaction, including crisis management. The article on civil defense is practically agreed.

On freedom, security and justice, the EU delegation's attention was again drawn to the need to commit in the agreement to the goal of moving to a visa-free regime of mutual travel for the nationals of Russia and the EU countries. The harmonization of articles related to migration, border management, combating cross-border crime, and anti-drug cooperation had substantially advanced.

On the economic track, the draft articles pertaining to sectoral dialogue continued to be discussed. Some of them are already fully or partially agreed; others require further deliberation. The sides also exchanged their conceptual approaches to the content of a new section devoted to regional cooperation.

Fundamental economic and trade issues were discussed in the context of the operation since January 1, 2010, of the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus and prospects for the accession of Russia and the other CU participants to the WTO. The EU delegation confirmed the European Union's support for early completion of the process of integrating Russia into the WTO.

Some progress was noted in the work on the articles dealing with cooperation on the issues of education, youth, culture and audiovisual policy.

The next round of negotiations will be held in late April-early May, which will allow the parties to report on results of the work done at the Russia-EU summit in Rostov-on-Don (31 May-1 June this year).