Jānis Vucāns, President of the BSPC, emphasized the need of deepening the parliamentary cooperation in the Baltic Sea Area, the crisis in Ukraine and the current situation of the refugees.
Mr Vucāns referred to his contribution to the Nordic Council in the previous year, stressing that the cooperation between the BSPC and the Nordic Council has been a true success story. “Our cooperation has further intensified this year, when the President of the Nordic Council, Mr Höskuldur Thórhallsson, and the Nordic Council delegation attended the BSPC’s 24th annual conference in Rostock.”
Referring to the conference in Rostock Mr Vucāns explained that it took place under the heading “Baltic Sea Region – A Role Model for Innovation in Social- and Healthcare”. “Even if we dealt mainly with questions of innovation in social- and healthcare, the question of cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region of course played a key role in this year’s conference again. First and foremost, the crisis in Ukraine was again on our agenda. In our resolution we welcomed “the agreements concluded in Minsk, which may lead to a peaceful solution of the conflict…” and insisted on their “thorough and unwavering implementation and appeal to the parties to provide comprehensive support to the work of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe”.
We also dealt with another topical issue, namely the refugee crisis, especially with regard to the social and health aspects of the situation. Expressing our solidarity with the refugees, which are forced to flee their homelands, and being aware of the big challenge to secure a safe residence we called on the governments in the Baltic Sea Region, the Council of Baltic Sea States, the World Health Organisation and the EU to ensure the decent treatment of the refugees especially concerning housing and healthcare.
It is important that we strengthen our dialogue on this issue in the Nordic and Baltic Sea region, as the Baltic Sea Region, from one side, is home to some of the most important actors and facilitators in the conflict in Syria, but on the other side, it is a real area of accommodation in Europe for significant amount of the Syrian refugees. When we discussed cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region in our this year’s conference, the cooperation with Russia was a key aspect. Therefore the contribution of Mr Thórhallsson in this issue was very important.
BSPC expects, that all Baltic Sea States will make their efforts to ensure that the Baltic Sea Region will continue to be a region of intensive cooperation and good, peaceful neighbourliness. To achieve that we will use all the opportunities of parliamentary, governmental and social exchange and dialogue. For this reason we also call for a resumption of the ministerial meetings of the Council of the Baltic Sea States. This will foster, in our opinion, the dialogue and strengthen cooperation.”
Detailing the priorities of the Latvian BSPC Presidency, Mr Vucans stated that it will focus on education and the labour market, and the synergy between them. “As both are the cornerstones of wellbeing in the region, the Latvian Presidency has made those both issues very prominent in the BSPC Work Programme for the time period 2015 – 2016. It is our goal to find political answers to questions such as how to ensure an effective collaboration between the labour market and education; what policy measures to apply in order to promote investment; how to deal with youth unemployment and ability of the labour force, et cetera.”
Concluding his remarks he asserted: “BSPC is active in a variety of fields and that is both because we hope to contribute to the wellbeing of our citizens and because we believe that we help drive concrete cooperation in the region, ultimately contributing to a safe and secure Baltic Sea Region. In my opinion it is very important and helpful for progress in several fields, if we bundle our common interests and further deepen the Parliamentary cooperation between Nordic Council and Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.”