European Union (EU) ambassador to Bangladesh Charles Whiteley has said they “of course want to see free and fair elections” in Bangladesh without any violence and that he thinks all Bangladeshis want to see the same.
He said they are not here to mediate or interfere in politics in Bangladesh but they are here to meet and listen to all political parties to understand the situation.
The EU Ambassador made remarks while responding to a question on the next national election in Bangladesh on Tuesday. Diplomats from the EU countries joined the media conference hosted at a hotel in Dhaka, marking Europe Day 2023.
The European Union will send an exploratory election monitoring mission in July. It has already received a written invitation from the Bangladesh Election Commission.
The EU ambassador recently had a meeting with chief election commissioner Kazi Habibul Awal.
The EU envoy said despite the impacts of pandemic and Russia-Ukraine war, Bangladesh’s exports to EU went up by 50 per cent.
“That's amazing! What we want to do in the coming years is to make sure there's a smooth transition to GSP plus, and the guidelines for doing that are very clear. As you probably know, by now, it means ratifying and implementing 32 conventions on environmental, labor and human rights standards,” Whiteley said.
“To make sure it happens smoothly, we will have a European Chamber of Commerce becoming operational this year,” he added.
“We're also working on and will launch negotiations on a new generation agreement-what we call ‘partnership and cooperation agreement’ or PCA,” he further said.
This new agreement will cover all sorts of policy areas-from climate change, energy, cybersecurity, maritime science, technology and also trade.
He said the EU is changing the way it supports Bangladesh.
“We no longer refer to ourselves as development partners. We're international partners, and one of the vehicles for that international partnership now in terms of assistance is the global gateway scheme,” the envoy said.
“I'm very happy that here in Bangladesh, we will have a flagship programme on the global gateway, as you might know, it is designed to support infrastructure around the world,” the EU ambassador said.
