Jānis Vucāns, President of the BSPC, addressed the 46th PABSEC General Assembly in Bucharest, emphasizing the importance of inter-parliamentary cooperation against the background of difficult challenges, such as combating terrorism, the current situation of refugees and the crisis in Ukraine..
Since the fight against terrorism was a central topic of this conference Mr Vucāns pointed out that “our fight against terrorism is not only about defending our security but also about our fundamental values, namely freedom, democracy and human rights.
It is therefore very important, that against this background parliamentarians from different regions come together and stand together as friends, and that this issue is not just discussed at the level of the EU and national states. In this current period of time, cooperation at parliamentary level has intrinsic value because such cooperation involves the elected representatives of the citizens of the participating countries.”
Referring to the topic of the refugees he emphasised: “It is important that we strengthen our dialogue on this issue in Europe also on a regional level. South East Europe is greatly affected by the overwhelming numbers of refugees transiting through some of its countries, just as the Baltic Sea Region is affected as well. I would like to mention, that the Baltic Sea Region is home both to some of the most important actors and facilitators in the conflict in Syria, as well as to those countries, which now accommodate significant amount of the Syrian refugees.
The Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference believes in the utmost importance of intense cooperation and good, peaceful neighbourliness. This includes also the necessity of strengthening the cooperation between such inter-parliamentary organisations like PABSEC and BSPC.”
With regard to the situation in Ukraine Mr Vucāns informed about this year’s resolution in which BSPC 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 and in the OSCE.”
Mr Vucāns´referred also to the 24th BSPC conference in Rostock and the newly-launched Working Group on Sustainable Tourism to illustrate how the BSPC and PABSEC can cooperate in a range of important policy fields, including tourism.
Concluding his remarks, he asserted that the BSPC strives to drive concrete cooperation in the region, ultimately contributing to a safe and secure Europe, and is therefore interested in approaches by other regions to regional cooperation.