The European Union is to deepen ties with its eastern neighboring countries and seek to build a new gas transit network at the Eastern Partnership and Southern Corridor summits.
Leaders from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine as well as the 27-nation European bloc are expected to sign a joint declaration at the Eastern Partnership Summit on Thursday to facilitate bilateral trade and visas.
The partnership, initiated by Poland and Sweden and proposed by the European Commission last year, is meant to bring the six former Soviet republics closer to the EU and achieve stability in the region.
Support for democratization, a market economy, and political and security cooperation are key elements of the Eastern Partnership, according to the current Czech EU presidency.
Besides, the EU troika -- the Czech Presidency, the European Commission and the General Secretariat of the Council, will hold a Southern Corridor Summit on Friday with Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan and transit countries Georgia and Turkey to discuss potential gas supplies.
The southern energy corridor is a term describing all pipelines needed to bring Caspian Sea and Central Asian gas to the EU with the Nabucco pipeline as the main part of the network.
The gas transit networks, including Nabucco and several other natural gas routes, were envisioned by the EU last year to achieve energy security by bypassing Russia.
Turkey and some EU member states are the driving forces behind the southern corridor, termed the Silk Road of energy.
Source: Xinhua
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