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Nepal and European Union (EU) initialed on a Horizontal Agreement (HA) related to air services amidst a program organized at the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation today. Both parties also signed an agreed record to further facilitating the agreement for final signature at mutually agreed date and venue.
The newly-initialed agreement would become an important legal instrument to restore legal certainty to the bilateral Air Services Agreements (ASAs) concluded between Nepal and eight EU member states so far. This agreement would, further, bring several provisions of bilateral ASAs between Nepal and EU member states compatible with EU laws and would relax the nationality restrictions in the bilateral ASAs between Nepal and EU member states by allowing any air carrier of EU member state to operate into Nepal which has underlying traffic rights and which originates flight from such member state having bilateral ASA with Nepal. These member states are now Austria, Germany, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Croatia and United Kingdom.
It would recognize an air carrier designated by Nepal with its principal place of business in Nepal and has an effective regulatory control over the air carrier. It is also expected that the initialed Horizontal Agreement would be instrumental towards strengthening Nepal-EU aviation relations by opening up new avenues for technical cooperation. This Agreement shall be applied provisionally until it comes into force.
The agreement was initialed in cordial and friendly atmosphere. Mr. Leela Mani Poudyal, Secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation and Mr. Eduardo LECHUNGA Jimenez, Charge de Affairs of the delegation of European Commission to Nepal initialed on the text on behalf of Government of Nepal and EU respectively.
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