Mr. Schroeder announced this in an interview with Rossiiskaya Gazeta published on Saturday, December 18 prior to the interstate German-Russian consultations.
"The European Union and Russia decided to launch strategic partnership during the last year's summit in St. Petersburg. This proves the special quality of Russia-EU relations and their common responsibility for security and stability of democracy and economic development in Europe," Gerhard Schroeder said.
According to him, the basis of this strategic partnership is the four common spaces: the common space of freedom, security and justice; the common economic space; the common external security space; and the common space of science, education and culture. Russian and the European Union share common interests and have joint projects within these spaces.
"Another important task is to outline contents of these spaces before the next Russia-EU summit in 2005 in Moscow," the German chancellor noted.
"This will boost our cooperation on key issues, for instance, the fight against international terrorism, economic cooperation and exchanges between our civil societies," Gerhard Schroeder stressed.
