News

On 4 October in Vilnius, Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Audronius Ažubalis met with Chairman of Azerbaijani Parliament’s (Milli Majlis) International and Inter-parliamentary Relations Committee Samad Seyidov and Chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Policy and State Building Ali Huseynov.

The interlocutors discussed ways to intensify bilateral relations, cooperation between the European Union and Azerbaijan, protracted conflicts in the South Caucasus region, other current issues of bilateral cooperation and international policy.

The Minister and the parliamentarians emphasized the successful cooperation between Lithuania and Azerbaijan in implementing bilateral projects of the EU Twinning programme in the fields of strengthening parliamentarism and combating corruption.

At the end of 2008, Lithuania was selected to implement two EU Twinning projects. The parliaments of Lithuania and Azerbaijan, as well as special investigation services are taking part in the implementation of these projects. Each one of these projects has a budget of 1 million EUR. The projects will be implemented over a period of two years. The projects are funded by the EU.

Azerbaijani parliamentarians said that they valued Lithuania’s experience, which was being passed on to country through the Twinning programme, and stated that they saw Lithuania as a strong and reliable partner for Azerbaijan’s integration into Euro-Atlantic structures.

Launched in 1998 at the initiative of the European Commission, the EU Twinning programme aims to help beneficiary countries to strengthen their institutional capacity. The main principle of the EU Twinning programme is the cooperation between public administration institutions of one country (beneficiary) and their counterparts in other countries (implementer), aiming to implement all the necessary reforms. After Lithuania joined the EU in 2004, Lithuanian institutions became eligible to provide assistance to other countries through this programme.

At the meeting in Vilnius, Lithuania’s Minister of Foreign Affairs A.Ažubalis stressed the necessity to further deepen bilateral economic relations. Although Azerbaijan is Lithuania’s largest trading partner in the South Caucasus, it is necessary to further increase bilateral trade volumes.

According to the data of the Lithuanian Department of Statistics, over the seven months in 2010, as compared with the same period in 2009, the bilateral trade turnover has increased by 10.4 percent. During this period, Lithuania’s exports to Azerbaijan increased even by 29.5 percent. Last year in September, the Lithuanian Trade House was opened in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan.