ANKARA - Energy and Natural Resources Minister Hilmi Guler who attended the Southeast European Energy Market meeting in Athens, Greece returned to Turkey on Tuesday.
Energy and Natural Resources Ministry said that Guler, who chaired the meeting as the term president, signed the memorandum of understanding on formation in Southeast Europe of a common energy market including electricity and natural gas with ministers and representatives of member states.
The countries which signed the memorandum of understanding expressed their political determination to regulate competitory regional energy markets in line with a series of EU electricity directive, natural gas directive, and a series of directives on environmental issues and to make their legal and administrative framework in harmony with the memorandum of understanding until July 1, 2005.
During the meeting, the demand of Austria to become a member of the Council was adopted in the meeting. Regional ministers also published a joint declaration stressing the continuation of EU participation and support and the equality of the sides in the process of formation of the regional energy market.
Guler met with European Commission vice president Loyola de Palacio, and Greek Development Minister Akis Tsokhatzopoulos about the issue of transfer of natural gas from Turkey to Europe via Greece. Guler discussed improvement of developing bilateral cooperation with Bulgaria in energy field with his Bulgarian counterpart Kovachev.
Turkey, Albania, Austria, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy, Kosovo, Macedonia, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, Greece and European Commission vice president attended the meeting.
(Öª) 09.12.2003