Press release, 16 August 2013
At the meeting of the Nordic and Baltic Parliamentary Speakers in Ilulissat (Greenland), Vydas Gedvilas, Speaker of the Seimas, emphasised the need to cooperate on the implementation of the Eastern Partnership.
“Continuous and consistent involvement of our countries in the Eastern Partnership policy-making is highly important and very much needed. Moreover, practical achievements in the field are evident; we, as well as the countries we work with, such as Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia and Armenia, feel the benefit of those achievements,” Mr Gedvilas said.
He reminded that the 3rd Eastern Partnership Summit will be held in Vilnius in November 2013. The Summit is one of the key multilateral top-level meetings to be held during the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.
“We intend to validate the major achievements of the Eastern Partnership at the Summit. The progress made in the simplification of the visa regime and efforts to improve bilateral cooperation should also be underlined,” Mr Gedvilas claimed.
The Speaker of the Seimas also reminded that the next meeting of the Nordic and Baltic Parliamentary Speakers will be held in Lithuania, in August 2014. The country will host this meeting for the second time, the first one was held in 2003. “I hope that all the Speakers of Parliaments of this cooperation format will come to Lithuania, because participation of each of them is obviously of crucial importance,” Mr Gedvilas said.
NB8 includes eight Nordic and Baltic countries: Denmark, Estonia, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Finland and Sweden. Their regular cooperation in various areas and on various political levels began in 1992.
Tomas Beržinskas, Adviser to the Speaker of the Seimas, tel. +370 5 239 6019, mob. +370 698 42 786, e-mail: [email protected]
