41st meeting of Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation held in Athens

13 December, 2019

Armenia’s Delegation headed by the Deputy Foreign Minister Mr. Artak Apitonian participated in the 41^st meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs (CMFA) of the Organization of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC), which was held in Athens, on 13 December 2019.

The meeting of the CMFA was chaired Mr. Nikos Dendias, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Hellenic Republic in the capacity of the incumbent Hellenic Chairmanship-in-Office of the BSEC Organization.

Expressing his appreciation to the Greek side for the productive activities of the Organization, Deputy Foreign Minister Apitonian, in his statement, touched upon the chronic problems facing the Organization and presented Armenia’s views on finding ways for their solution. He particularly expressed concerns regarding recent frequent waivers of the chairmanship, talked about the need for reform process and increasing the efficiency of the BSEC.

The Deputy Foreign Minister presented brief information on the outcomes of the 23rd World Congress on Information Technology (WCIT 2019) held in Yerevan on 6-9 October 2019 and the BSEC-centered high-side event organized on the sidelines of WCIT. He expressed Armenia’s determination to contribute to furthering the Organization’s objectives on ICT and strengthen this sectoral cooperation among BSEC countries.

Mr. Apitonian emphasized that attempts to politicize and inject bilateral differences including biased conflict perceptions into the agenda of the Organization and its related bodies in particular PABSEC are detrimental to its principles, against the Charter and undermine its reputation and effectiveness. He has further underlined the need for trade facilitation, open borders, utilization of existing transport systems and development of new ones in the BSEC region, which is especially important for landlocked countries to have unfettered, efficient and cost-effective access to and from the sea, on the basis of the freedom of transit.

Apitonian expressed his concern with the fact that already two years the draft Regional Trade Facilitation Strategy has been held hostage by Azerbaijan, which tries to insert an attachement with its unsubstantiated and false allegations. Deputy Minister expressed a hope that commonsense and wisdom would eventually prevail and Azerbaijan will withdraw the legally redundant attachment thus allowing the adoption of this very important document for the organization.

At the conclusion of the meeting, a ceremony took place whereby the Hellenic Republic handed over the Chairmanship-in-Office of BSEC to Romania, which will assume the duties of BSEC Chairmanship for a period of six months, from 1 January to 30 June 2020.

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