Date of release : 06-05-2005

Policy area : General Affairs and External Relations

Event : EU-Russia Summit

An EU-Russia summit will be held in Moscow on 10 May 2005. Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker, in his capacity as current President of the European Council, will attend, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin, President of the European Commission José Manuel Durao Barroso, and the High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) Javier Solana.

Jean Asselborn, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and President of the Council of the European Union, will also participate in the meeting.

On the agenda of the summit are the Strategic Partnership between the European Union and Russia, and particularly the finalisation of the roadmaps that the Union and Russia are preparing for the following four common spaces: economy, freedom-security-justice, external security, and research-education-culture.

The roadmaps set out specific objectives for cooperation on the spaces in the coming years. They also include measures to be taken by the European Union and Russia to achieve those objectives.

At the EU-Russia summit in Saint Petersburg in May 2003, the European Union and Russia agreed to intensify their strategic cooperation in these four areas. Through the creation of these common spaces, the European Union and Russia will be in a position to cooperate more closely in areas of common interest and on cross-border questions.

The EU-Russia summit was preceded by a series of preparatory meetings in Luxembourg under the Luxembourg Presidency, including the EU-Russia ministerial troika of 28 February 2005, the meeting of the EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council on 1 April 2005, and the Justice and Home Affairs ministerial meeting between the European Union and Russia of 15 April 2005.