On Saturday the 25 foreign ministers will be joined at a working lunch by their counterparts from four candidate countries -- Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Turkey.
This will be the first EU ministerial meeting to be attended by Croatian Foreign Minister Miomir Zuzul after Croatia was awarded the status of a candidate for EU membership on June 18.
During the last round of enlargement, the EU Council introduced the practice of calling representatives of candidate countries to its meetings.
According to a statement released by the Dutch EU Presidency, the meeting will discuss a number of foreign policy and security issues, including relations with ten Asian countries participating in the ASEM (Asian-European Meeting) process and the situation in the Near East, Iraq, Iran and Sudan.
On Saturday morning, the ministers will exchange their views about the situation in the Balkans and future relations between the EU and the Union of Serbia and Montenegro.