Your Excellencies Heads of Parliaments,
President of the Baltic Assembly,
Participants and Guests,
Colleagues,
I would like to greet all the Latvian, Estonian and Lithuanian representatives who have gathered at the 29th Session of the Baltic Assembly here today. I am delighted to see you all and I hope that our interaction and our work will not only be open and pleasant but also meaningful and beneficial for all the participating countries.
Last year, when I was speaking from the rostrum of the Lithuanian Parliament about the Baltic Assembly and its goals, I expressed the idea that it was necessary to encourage real and dynamic integration of the three Baltic States and that stagnant co-operation should be invigorated by active and creative activities of the Assembly. I was convinced then and so I am today that the Baltic Assembly with its initiatives should lead the co-operation of the Baltic nations while its decisions should have a real impact on the policy of our States.
I am glad that strengthening of the Baltic States and the Nordic countries’ co-operation is one of the Assembly’s priorities this year. I am confident that the Baltic States and the Nordic countries should become an undivided community on the basis of both a common political and economic development vector and an undivided security concept. The Lithuanian Parliament has thus given the most favourable assessment of the Baltic and Nordic experts’ report and, first and foremost, its recommendations with regard to closer partnership between the states of the region.
I believe that the Baltic Assembly together with the Nordic Council should not only co-ordinate the implementation of the recommendations presented in this report but also suggest their own projects which would enhance the integration of the Baltic States and the Nordic countries and become a kind of bank of modern ideas and targeted initiatives for deepening European integration.
My wishes to the Baltic Assembly then were its concrete activities, so now I would like to propose a few specific ideas and I hope they will be worth the attention of the Baltic Assembly and the Nordic Council.
As you are all well aware, in May this year Mr. Jerzy Buzek, President of the European Parliament, and Mr. Jacques Delors, former President of the European Commission, suggested developing a long-term strategy of the common EU energy policy. The authors of the initiative suggested considering the possibility of shaping regional gas purchasing groups and establishing the EU gas purchasing agency in the long term. The activities of these groups would be aimed at: negotiations on gas supply contracts with external suppliers; implementation of joint investment projects, and creation of infrastructure for storage of gas reserves. These measures would obviously limit possibilities of some countries, e.g., possibilities of certain energy suppliers to take advantage of their monopolistic situation or carry out discriminative gas pricing policy against individual EU member states. Why couldn’t we set a joint expert group of the Baltic Assembly and the Nordic Council to consider this initiative and present recommendations for its implementation?
I would also like to remind you of another idea – the idea of setting up a Common Baltic – Nordic Information Space. This initiative would undoubtedly increase our information security that has been impermissibly devalued, marginalized and exposed to external information and ideological influence. It would be reasonable for the Baltic television companies to exchange their programmes, regularly informing about topicalities of their countries’ life, traditions and culture. The Nordic countries’ programmes could certainly supplement and expand this information space. This would enable to Baltic residents to at least partly identify themselves with the North European region both in a historical and cultural sense and help the Nordic people to re-discover the Baltic States.
I would also like to briefly refer to the idea of the North Defence Alliance. Discussions on this topic have markedly intensified after the Russia-Georgia war in 2008. I wonder whether the Nordic countries that are shaping the Defence Alliance, also see the Baltic States as its constituent part? The project of the joint Nordic-Baltic Defence Alliance would not only strengthen the security of the Baltic States but also help them to become a part of the Nordic “security community” which would enhance the security of the whole region in corpore.
The effects of the economic crisis are a proof of specific problems in the banking sector of the region. The practice of the Nordic banks has demonstrated that the Baltic States are not yet considered as a constituent part of the Nordic countries’ market. This is not the situation we would embrace since we would prefer to see the Baltic States’ financial market as an integral and inseparable part of the Nordic countries’ internal market. The Baltic Assembly together with the Nordic Council could undertake to clarify what “homework” might help to achieve this integration and protect them from similar crises of the banking sector or at least soften them in the future.
I have just pointed to several specific activity areas from numerous possibilities. The main idea of these activities is that the growing and enhanced progress, welfare and security of one state contribute to strengthening of the whole region. Therefore, our co-operation and integration is not just an occasional rhetoric but the necessity that has been repeatedly confirmed by life and history.
I am confident that our Assembly, like an eloquent example of historical co-operation of the Baltic States, can and must continue its activities by implementing qualitative changes, responding to newly emerging problems and thus gaining a new value. It is in our will and power to participate in this creation process and I sincerely invite you all to join it.
Thank you for your attention.
Irena Degutienë
Speaker of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania
