Euro-Parliament hearing on Turkish-Armenian border
TEPSA, Brussels. On 7 November in Brussels, on the occasion of a meeting of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee and the European Parliament Delegation to the EU-Armenia Parliamentary Cooperation Committee, two authors of TEPSA’s study on “The case for opening the Turkish-Armenian border”, presented the results of their work to the Members of the European Parliament.
This was the
first meeting of the two delegations, and was held in preparation for
possible parliamentary initiatives in support of opening the border and
normalising relations between the Republics of Armenia and Turkey. The
meeting was convened and chaired by Delegation Chairpersons Marie-Anne
Isler Beguin (EU-Armenia PCC) and Joost Lagendijk (EU-Turkey JPC).
After a presentation of the main findings of the study, Burcu
Gultekin-Punsmann, Research Fellow at the Center for European Studies
at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, and Nicolas
Tavitian, Director of the Inside Europe resource centre, answered the
questions of the Parliamentarians. The quality of their work was
acknowledged by the Chairperson of the meeting Marie-Anne Isler-Beguin,
who welcomed it as a contribution to raising awareness on this
sensitive issue, as well as opening new perspectives for discussion.
The study, which was delivered as part of the framework contract
between the Trans-European Policy Studies Association (TEPSA) and the
European Parliament, was coordinated by Nathalie Tocci of TEPSA’s
Italian member Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI) in Rome.
To obtain a copy of the study, please contact Mathieu Briens at TEPSA (mathieu.briens@tepsa.be).
Links:
The study will also be available on the European Parliament website at:
www.europarl.europa.eu/activities/expert/eStudies.do
www.insideeurope.org
