8 December 2016, the 28th meeting of the Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs of GUAM (CMFA) was held in Hamburg within the 23rd Meeting of the OSCE Ministerial Council.

It was attended by the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Azerbaijan E. Mammadyarov (chaired the meeting), Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia M. Janelidze, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration of the Republic of Moldova A. Galbur, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine P. Klimkin and Secretary General of GUAM A. Efendiev.

This event was the final meeting of the GUAM Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs in 2016, at which the results of the Chairmanship of the Republic of Azerbaijan in the Organization were summed up for the current year.

The Secretary General informed the CMFA about the activities of the Organization and the GUAM Secretariat in the reporting period, described the results of the priority areas of cooperation. He also drew the attention of the CMFA to the need to improve the efficiency of the main bodies of GUAM in order to increase the effectiveness of the activities of the Organization.

The CMFA confirmed the importance of the meeting of the Heads of Government of the GUAM Member States in Kyiv and the business conference timed to it to give impetus to the development of cooperation in such areas as transport, trade, and private entrepreneurship. In this regard, the CMFA called on the countries to facilitate the timely completion of national procedures for agreeing on documents submitted for signing at this meeting.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Georgia spoke about the priorities of the Georgian Chairmanship in the year of the 20th Anniversary of GUAM and presented the Program of the Chairmanship under the slogan ‘Together for a Strong GUAM’ to the Ministerial Council.

The CMFA discussed the issues of international cooperation in the format GUAM+, as well as with international organizations, and noted the importance of continuing cooperation in this direction. The Council of Ministers for Foreign Affairs welcomed the adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution «Cooperation between the United Nations and the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development – GUAM» and heard information from the Chairmanship on the current status of progress of the UN General Assembly Resolution «Protracted conflicts in the GUAM area and their implications for international peace, security and development». The CMFA instructed the diplomatic missions of the GUAM Member States to continue efforts to mobilize support for this draft Resolution.

The CMFA noted the importance of inter-parliamentary cooperation, called for its deepening and welcomed in this regard the holding of regular meetings of the relevant committees of the Parliamentary Assembly (PA) of GUAM, the Bureau of the GUAM PA and the next meeting of the GUAM PA (Baku, December 14-15, 2016).

The CMFA considered the issues of sectoral cooperation, in particular, approved the coordinating countries of the working groups for 2017-2018, and also made a decision to create a new GUAM Working Body ‘GUAM Working Group on Youth and Sports’.

The CMFA also considered the organizational and financial issues of the Organization’s activities, including the approval of the Organization’s budget for 2017.

At the Ministerial Council meeting, the chairmanship of GUAM in 2017 was transferred to Georgia.