📋 Tender Overview
The Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Kostadin Kojabashev reviewed current issues related to the work of the department within the framework of the weekly regular briefing.Among the topics presented were the process of Bulgarias accession to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development OECD and the results of the meeting of the Interdepartmental Coordination Mechanism on August 25 2022 the informal meeting of the ministers of foreign affairs of the EU Gymnich held on August 30-31 in Prague the visit of President Rumen Radev and the participation of Minister Nikolay Milkov in the official delegation to the United Arab Emirates on September 1 and 2. The decisions adopted at the meeting of the Council of Ministers on the opening of three new consular offices abroad - in Lyon Dusseldorf and Edinburgh as well as the work of the ministry in connection with the crash of a Bulgarian bus near the Hungarian city of Kecskemet and the fire of a residential building in Apolda Germany also were among the highlights of the briefing.Deputy Minister Kodjabashev emphasized that the meeting of the Interagency Coordination Mechanism for the accession of the Republic of Bulgaria to the OECD was the first since the adoption of Resolution No. 242 of the Council of Ministers of August 11 2022 which strengthened and further developed it.During the meeting chaired by Deputy Minister Velislava Petrova and with the participation of Deputy Prime Minister Atanas Pekanov the strong commitment of the caretaker government to the process of joining our country to the OECD was confirmed. Also discussed were the preparation of the Initial Memorandum in which Bulgaria must make a self-assessment and state a position on each of the legal instruments of the organization as well as the distribution of responsibilities between the institutions and the deadlines in which the first projects will be presented. The administration is maximally mobilized to achieve rapid progress in the process of Bulgarias accession to the OECD said Deputy Minister Kodjabashev.In connection with the current visit of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Nikolay Milkov to the United Arab Emirates as part of the official delegation led by the President of the Republic of Bulgaria Rumen Radev it was emphasized that five agreements will be signed - for strategic partnership for cooperation in the fields of education culture agriculture and tourism. Among the highlights of the talks during the visit are a number of topics of common interest and areas of bilateral partnership - mutual investments in high technologies and energy as well as economic cooperation.During the briefing the main topics from the agenda of the informal meeting of EU foreign ministers Gymnich were also presented - EU-Africa relations and Russian aggression against Ukraine. Bulgaria was represented at the forum by Deputy Minister Velislava Petrova.According to Deputy Minister Kojabashev in the conditions of Russian military aggression against Ukraine and in view of the fact that Russia has declared the member states including Bulgaria as enemy states a political agreement was reached for the temporary termination suspension of the Agreement between the European Community and the Russian Federation on facilitating the issuance of visas to citizens of the EU and Russia. Bulgaria is part of this political agreement added Kostadin Kojabashev and specified that this kind of agreements are rather an exception in the EU visa policy as a sign of existing cooperation between the EU and a specific third country and at the moment the conditions for the functioning of such cooperation with Russia is not available.
