Speaking at a press conference following the EU’s Foreign Affairs Council in Paris, the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell noted the meeting of the Joint Commission of the JCPOA on Friday in Vienna, chaired by the Secretary General of the European External Action Service Helga Schmid, and attended by representatives from Iran and the five remaining signatories to the landmark nuclear deal -- Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.
Borrell, who also serves as vice-president of the European Commission, said the Friday meeting “showed that all participants stand behind the agreement and want to preserve it.”
“This unanimous position is for us very important,” he stressed.
“I highlighted on a note, just after the meeting, that to keep this agreement alive is a collective responsibility but unless the recent negative trend on the nuclear side is not reversed it will not be sustainable,” he added.
Borrell further underscored that the European Union and all participants of the Friday meeting in Vienna were “very much standing behind this agreement.”
The Friday meeting was the first meeting by the remaining parties to the JCPOA since July. In May 2018, US President Donald Trump unilaterally pulled his country out of the agreement and later reimposed the sanctions that had been lifted against Tehran as part of the agreement.
In response to the move, Iran began taking measures to reduce its commitments to the JCPOA in a bid to create a balance between its rights and obligations and also to encourage the other parties to live up to their own share of commitments to keep the agreement alive.
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