Brussels –  Current members of the Central European Free Trade Agreement (CEFTA) – Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and The former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia – could soon be joined by Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Moldova and Montenegro, as well as by UNMIK/Kosovo, after all negotiating parties made significant progress towards amending the 13-year old text and enlarging the agreement.

The new text, known in its draft form as CEFTA 2006, is a trade agreement that incorporates new provisions such as trade in services, intellectual property rights, public procurement and investment promotion and is completely in line with the rules of the World Trade Organisation and with the parties’ obligations towards the EU.

Meeting for three days in Brussels, the 3^rd round of negotiations, chaired by the Stability Pact and hosted by the European Commission, made considerable progress, tackling areas such as competition, rules of origin and technical barriers to trade. Some bilateral trade issues must now be resolved before the parties meet for the final round/legal review on 19 and 20 October in Brussels.

The need to ensure the full implementation of the agreement was also discussed and parties made progress regarding the proposal to have a small secretariat to support the implementation of the agreement. Up to now, CEFTA was the only multilateral trade agreement without an administrative body and taking into account the scale of the expansion of membership and the number of new and complex trade areas, this is now being reconsidered.

For further information, please contact Stability Pact's Spokesperson
Mr Dragan Barbutovski at the SP Secretariat in Brussels
(Tel: +32 2 401 87 25 or press@stabilitypact.org).

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PR2006/015