Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.com) -- On 12 May, Sadyk Safoyev, First Deputy Chairman of the Senate of the Oliy Majlis of the Republic of Uzbekistan, held talks with the chairman of the delegation of the European Parliament for Relations with Central Asian Countries and Mongolia Fulvio Martusciello (Italy) in a video conference format.

During the conversation, a thorough exchange of views took place on the development of relations between the Republic of Uzbekistan and the European Union, including in the field of bilateral inter-parliamentary relations.

The development of political dialogue and the expansion of economic cooperation with the European Union is one of the important priorities of our country’s foreign policy. Recently, relations between the parties are gaining new momentum. Evidence of this is the substantive telephone conversation held in April between the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan Shavkar Mirziyoyev and the head of the European Council Charles Michel.

Fulvio Martusciello was informed about the measures taken to counteract the spread of coronavirus in Uzbekistan. In this context, the Uzbek side expressed gratitude to the EU for its readiness to provide financial assistance in the amount of 36 million euros to reduce the impact of the pandemic on the country’s socio-economic development.

The chairman of the delegation of the European Parliament praised the decisive and effective measures taken by the country’s leadership to counter COVID-19. According to him, without a doubt, the effectiveness of anti-crisis measures by the leadership of the Republic of Uzbekistan was to a decisive extent due to the fact that a reform program has been implemented in recent years.

The fact that Uzbekistan provided humanitarian assistance in the fight against coronovirus to foreign countries, including the country of the European Union - Hungary, was especially noted.

The European Parliament deputy gave a positive assessment to the results of negotiations between Uzbekistan and the EU in Tashkent in March of this year on the draft Agreement on Enhanced Partnership and Cooperation (SRPS) during which the parties managed to agree on many important issues of this comprehensive document.

Martusciello agreed that obtaining by Uzbekistan the preferential trade status of “GSP +”, which allows exporting more than 6 thousand items of goods to the EU on a duty-free basis, will be an important step demonstrating support for the reform policy in Uzbekistan.

During the negotiations, issues were also discussed on holding the next 15th meeting of the Uzbekistan-EU Parliamentary Cooperation Committee in Brussels.