Year 2006

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President of the Slovak Republic Received Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet

April 3, 2006

President of the Slovak Republic Ivan Gašparovič received Foreign Minister of the Republic of Estonia Urmas Paet.

Both partners appreciated the quality of bilateral relations of the two countries. In addition, the Estonian guest highlighted the fact that Ivan Gašparovič was historically the first Slovak president to visit the Republic of Estonia.

Their talks included the issue of making the economic cooperation more dynamic, in particular in the field of information technologies, building industry and energy. The balance of the mutual trade amounts to about USD 40 mil., which does not really reflect the trade potential of both countries.

President Ivan Gašparovič was also interested in progress made by building a nuclear power plant in Estonia. However, the main topic of the talks was the future of the European Union and the European constitution. Urmas Paet advocates the opinion that all the member states of the EU should clearly express their positions regarding the Constitutional Treaty, and they should ratify it.

As Urmas Paet put it, the European Constitutional Treaty does not need to be amended as it is questionable whether it is possible at all to draft a Constitution with contents better than the current ones. In this connection, President Ivan Gašparovič declared that in the future the Slovak Republic will support drafting a new document based on which the EU could function further.

Moreover, the Slovak President said that it would be equally inevitable to solve the relation of national parliaments to the European Parliament. Then the counterparts discussed the issues of the expected energy development of the EU, multilateral relations to the Russian Federation as well as possibilities of cooperation at the V4 level or the Association of Baltic Countries.

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