The consultations focused on transport connections between Europe and Central Asia were held in Brussels on the sidelines of the Connecting Europe Days 2024 event (2-5 April 2024), the Embassy of Turkmenistan in Belgium reports.
The meeting was attended by the head of the Department of Foreign Economic Relations and Logistics of the Agency of Maritime and River Transport of Turkmenistan. He devoted his presentation to the key areas of Turkmenistan’s transport diplomacy, as well as major projects of regional importance currently being implemented, which involve the Turkmen transport system.
In particular, the prospects for the development of a sustainable transport system in Central Asia and their integration with the TEN-T policy of the European Union were discussed. The conclusions of a June 2023 study by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) on Central Asia’s transport system were reviewed. Participants explored how the TEN-T approach could be applied in Central Asia to improve transport infrastructure.
During the event, bilateral negotiations were held between transport experts from Central Asian countries and TEN-T policy experts from Europe. These negotiations led to consensus that the creation of a joint platform for the rapprochement of the European Union and Central Asia in the transport sector could potentially yield positive outcomes.
Turkmenistan’s representative expressed their willingness to host a meeting in Ashgabat for European government agencies and companies in conjunction with the next EU-Central Asia ministerial meeting in 2024.
The EU’s trans-European transport network policy, the TEN-T policy, is a key instrument for the development of coherent, efficient, multimodal, and high-quality transport infrastructure across the EU. It comprises railways, inland waterways, short sea shipping routes and roads linking urban nodes, maritime and inland ports, airports and terminals. ///nCa, 6 April 2024