Euromed Trade Ministers To Convene In Istanbul On Wednesday

ISTANBUL - Fourth Europe-Mediterranean (EUROMED) Trade Ministers Conference will be held in Istanbul tomorrow (Wednesday).
Foreign trade ministers and high-level representatives of twenty-five European Union (EU) member countries and ten Mediterranean states, as well as EU Commission will attend the conference.
Holding a press conference on Tuesday, Turkish State Minister Kursad Tuzmen said that studies on the establishment of a EUROMED free trade zone would be reviewed; decisions would be made on further steps; and progress recorded under free trade agreements among the Mediterranean countries would be assessed during the one-day conference.
Tuzmen said that the Barcelona process which envisaged establishment of such a zone by 2010 was a program targeting stability and development in Europe-Mediterranean area and had political, economic, financial, social, humanitarian and cultural dimensions.
Tuzmen added that EUROMED countries had become a giant market with a population of nearly 700 million, with a gross domestic product of nearly 11.5 trillion U.S. dollars and with a foreign trade volume of nearly 2.3 trillion U.S. dollars.
(MS-ULG) 20.07.2004