PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Dear Prime Minister!

First of all, I would like to thank you and your British colleagues for the invitation to these negotiations and this meeting, and for the brilliant organization of today’s work.

During the meeting we examined a broad range of questions. The Prime Minister has just mentioned a great deal of them. We discussed the lines along which our future joint activities will take place.

First and foremost, we focused on the four common spaces and four Road Maps towards implementing these common spaces.

Let me remind you that these four common spaces are the common economic space, questions of internal security, of external security, and of freedom, education, and academic research.

We agreed to charge our experts with working on questions pertaining to launching the Road Maps’ joint implementation. Regarding this, let me point out that concrete work towards fulfilling some of the previous agreements’ provisions is already being carried out. This is primarily true of the so-called industry dialogues. In particular, the transportation dialogue between Russia and the European Union began the day before the summit. Yesterday colleagues signed the document pertaining to this question.

Another of the meeting’s important themes is strengthening our cooperation’s legal framework. The Agreement on Partnership and Cooperation between Russia and the European Union has played a key and well-known role in the strategic partnership’s development. It regulates the many different aspects of our cooperation. However, both the fact that 2007 will mark the end of its initial ten-year term and that the EU plans to accept new members requires creating an up-to-date legal framework in line with the realities of our time.

Today we spoke about changes taking place inside the EU, since both the adoption of the constitution and other institutional changes are at the forefront of discussions. Life itself requires this, but conditions and life can change, and if they do, it is evident that certain corrective amendments to Russia-EU cooperation will have to be made. In due time, we must thinking of strengthening the legal framework on which our cooperation rests.

Already today we consider it necessary to plan the priorities for our cooperation and to optimise institutional mechanisms. In connection with this we have agreed to set up the relevant expert dialogue.

In our discussions with our European partners we give great value to measures which will allow us to remove dividing lines between states on the European continent. I will point out that we reached a consensus on the basic elements of agreements to simplify the visa regime and readmission between Russia and the European Union.

In connection with this I would like to thank the experts, European commissioners, and our Russian colleagues who worked on this document. I wish to say a special thank you to the British Presidency. In practical terms, we consider this an important step towards the implementation of plans we previously agreed upon.

We consider these agreements to be one of the steps that would help us to approach a situation where a visa-free regime could be introduced.

We discussed the launch of a forthcoming programme to train young researchers in the fields of economics and European law at the Moscow Institute of International Relations in detail. We consider training young researchers who will develop our cooperation with the European Union one of our high-priority tasks.

As in previous summits, special attention was given to the EU fulfilling the Joint Statement on EU enlargement and the Russia-EU relationship.

We discussed actual international problems in a constructive way. The Prime Minister mentioned them just now, and I shall not repeat what he said.

In conclusion I would like to emphasize that the London summit’s results confirmed that we are consistently strengthening our partnership and giving it new substance and quality. I am firmly convinced of the success of our future teamwork.

We have not yet agreed on the exact date, but as a whole our colleagues agree that the next summit can take place in the spring of 2006.

Thank you for your attention.