Turkmenistan and the EU are beginning full-scale diplomatic cooperation
Turkmenistan and the European Union are beginning full-scale diplomatic cooperation. Today, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov received the credentials of the EU Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Turkmenistan, Diego Ruiz Alonso. Before that, the head of the EU Contact Bureau in Turkmenistan represented European interests in Ashgabat. Last summer, the European Union’s Representative Office in Turkmenistan was opened in Ashgabat, and the European Envoy was accredited today. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov and Diego Ruiz Alonso discussed a wide range of issues of bilateral cooperation, including political, economic, legal, humanitarian and environmental spheres. Special attention was paid to safety ensuring and settling the situation in Afghanistan, developing transport routes on the Eurasian continent, and also diversifying energy supplies to the world, and in particular to the European market. If security and transport are more or less clear, then the interaction in the field of Turkmen gas supplies to the EU market is the subject of many questions and disputes, both from the project’s opponents and its supporters. Realizing that the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline, which is necessary for delivering Turkmen gas to Europe, is becoming a “bone of contention” for the coastal countries, Ashgabat practically stopped promoting this project at international negotiating platforms. Peace and reconciliation in the region are higher than the economic benefits that offer prospects of the construction of a gas pipeline under the Caspian Sea. However, the Europeans themselves think differently. In January of this year, the EU representative in Turkmenistan, Lubomir Frebort, addressing an international conference, dedicated to the 25th anniversary of Turkmen neutrality, declared that the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline remains an important part of the EU’s energy strategy. He emphasized that the Trans-Caspian Gas Pipeline construction project is included in the list of priority EU energy projects by the new European Commission. Thus, if Brussels decides to change its presence in Turkmenistan to a full-fledged representation and the appointment of an Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Ashgabat, we’ll expect stepping up of interaction between Turkmenistan and the EU, including in the project implementation for supply of Turkmen gas to Europe.
