REUTERS
The European Commission may be able to have another round of separate high-level talks with Russia and Ukraine to prepare for gas negotiations in the trilateral format, EU Commissioner for Energy and Climate Action Arias Canete said today at a press conference in Brussels, an UNIAN correspondent reported.
"It’s clear that the last trilateral meeting held in Vienna did not deliver any progress. We went in Vienna with a draft protocol which had largely been agreed at senior official level, with only a few issues in brackets, but at ministerial level position had changed and it became clear that there was no political will to agree a new protocol," Cañete said, according to Euractiv.
Meanwhile, bilateral gas talks with Ukrainian Energy and Coal Industry Minister Volodymyr Demchyshyn will be held in Vienna next week, August 27, in the framework of the Western Balkans Summit that will be attended by Vice-President of the European Commission for Energy Union Maros Sefcovic.
As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukrainian energy minister stated that bilateral gas talks between Ukraine and the European Commission scheduled for August 27 and August 28 would be held with the participation of representatives from the U.S. government."The meeting will take place in Vienna on [August] 27-28. Americans partners are scheduled to take part.
The meeting is the next round [of the gas talks]. The American side will be represented by the U.S. government. This is a bilateral format with U.S. delegates participating informally," he told reporters on Wednesday, August 19.
The parties intend to hammer out a common position for entering trilateral gas talks with Russia by mid-September.