At a meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan on Friday, January 17, 2025, Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Rashid Meredov, presented a report on the ongoing efforts to enhance cooperation with the European Union.
Strengthening mutually beneficial ties with the EU remains a cornerstone of Turkmenistan’s foreign policy.
Concrete steps are being taken to advance this partnership. Special attention was paid to the meeting between President of Turkmenistan Serdar Berdimuhamedov and President of the European Council Charles Michel, held in September 2023 in New York. In 2024, Ashgabat was visited by high-ranking EU representatives, including Vice-President of the European Commission Margaritis Schinas and European Commissioner for International Cooperation Jutta Urpilainen.
The visit of the delegation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan to Brussels in March 2024 became an important stage of the bilateral dialogue, during which the Protocol to the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement was signed. Meetings of the Inter–Parliamentary Dialogue and the Turkmenistan-EU Joint Committee are regularly held in Ashgabat and Brussels.
At the meeting of the heads of foreign ministries of the Central Asian countries and the EU in Luxembourg in October 2023, a joint Roadmap for deepening interregional relations was adopted.
In this context, initiatives were proposed to the President of Turkmenistan, including holding a number of key events in 2025:
- Meeting of the Inter-Parliamentary Dialogue;
- The 20th meeting of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Central Asian countries and the EU in Ashgabat;
- The visit of the European Commissioner for International Cooperation to Turkmenistan.
- The Forum of Women Leaders of Central Asia and the EU in Ashgabat (in the first decade of April 2025).
A proposal was also made related to the upcoming summit with the participation of the heads of State of Central Asia and the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission, which is scheduled to be held in Samarkand in April this year.
Within the framework of cooperation with the EU, projects are being implemented in the fields of education, ecology and the development of the circular economy.
Meredov highlighted the prospects for cooperation in the science and education within the framework of the European Commission’s Horizon Europe and Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Programs, as well as interaction with the European Research Council (ERC). In this regard, the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan are invited to carry out appropriate work on the wide use of these opportunities.
Summarizing the report, President Serdar Berdimuhamedov stressed that Turkmenistan, consistently following the legal status of neutrality, actively cooperates with countries of the world and international organizations. As noted, by building up these relations based on the principles of peacefulness and good-neighborliness, Turkmenistan will continue to implement the “open door” policy.
For many years, Turkmenistan has been constructively cooperating with the European Union, as fully evidenced by the positive results of partnership in the political, economic, cultural and humanitarian spheres, the Head of state stressed, approving the proposals submitted to expand the bilateral and multilateral dialogue between Turkmenistan and the EU. ///nCa, 18 January 2025