Third round of Armenia-EU talks on deep and comprehensive trade scheduled for December 3-5 in Brussels

YEREVAN, October 5. / ARKA /. The third round of Armenian-EU negotiations on deep and comprehensive free trade area are scheduled for December 3-5 in Brussels, the Armenian ministry of economy said today.

It said the second round was held in Yerevan on October 2-4 October. The Armenian delegation was led by deputy economy minister Garegin Melkonyan, the EU delegation was led by the head of Europe and Central Asia department of the trade directorate of the European Commission Luc Pierre Devin.

The sides were said to have discussed the legal texts of the agreement in ten different areas - trade in goods, competition, technical barriers to trade, customs issues, sustainable development, intellectual property rights, rules of origin, transparency, protection of trade, sanitary and phyto-sanitary facilities. 

The sides were said to have registered propgress in all areas. They have also reconciled legal texts in two directions. Upon the completion of this round of negotiations they signed a document that sets out the obligations and agreements of the parties in preparation for the next round.

In the third round the sides will continue talks on all these areas and will discuss also four draft texts covering trade in services, government procurement, and energy.

On February 27 the EU’s Trade Commission decided to launch negotiations on a deep and comprehensive free trade area with Armenia to boost economic growth and investment. The launch of the trade negotiations was conditioned upon Armenia fulfilling a set of “key recommendations”. These were issued in June 2009 and covered necessary reforms in key regulatory areas related to trade, in order to prepare Armenia for the upcoming negotiations. -0-