BSPC President Jörgen Pettersson and BSPC Secretary General Bodo Bahr had an insightful conversation with the Chairman of the Senior Officials of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, Ambassador Hans Olsson, the Deputy Director of the CBSS Secretariat, Bernd Hemingway and representatives of all units of the CBSS Secretariat on 20 March in the premises of the CBSS Secretariat in Stockholm about possibilities to intensify the collaboration and to identify common activities.
During the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference in Brussels, Ambassador Olsson made a series of concrete offers to deepen mutual cooperation and underlined that CBSS sees a great foundation for the development of the dialogue and collaboration between the CBSS and the BSPC.
These collaboration points were the basis for the discussion in Stockholm.
The representatives of the CSS Secretariat informed in detail about their current work priorities.
In regard to Baltic 2030 CBSS had invited the BSPC to participate in ReGeneration 2030 – a joint initiative by the NCM and the CBSS, focusing on youth engagement in Agenda 2030. ReGeneration 2030 Summit will take place on 18th-20th of August 2018 in Mariehamn. BSPC President Pettersson informed that he was in contact with the organisers of ReGeneration 2030, that he would participate in the Summit and that 2 representatives of the Summit would be given the opportunity to present their manifesto and the results of their Summit at the 27th BSPC.
In view to a proposal of an annual CBSS-BSPC event to discuss how to coherently implement SDGs and environmental agendas across the region (e.g. back-to-back with BSPC annual conference in Marienhamn) had been envisaged by the BSPC to start a common discussion on the SDG within the framework of the 27th BSPC.
BSPC will further discuss an increased involvement of the BSPC Rapporteurs in the work of the respective CBSS working groups – which is already very intensive in the field of labour – and, in the future more back-to-back events with the BSPC during future annual conferences.
CBSS had already been involved in the BSPC Working Group on Migration and Integration and will be involved in the further work.