NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s Spring Session begins in the Seimas on Friday

The NATO Parliamentary Assembly’s (NATO PA) Spring Session will begin in the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania on Friday 30 May. The event will bring together some 600 participants: parliamentarians from the 28 NATO member countries, NATO PA associate countries, regional partners, delegations of the European Parliament and representatives of various international organisations.

The proposal to hold 2014 NATO PA session in Vilnius was submitted by the Seimas Delegation to the NATO PA in 2010. This initiative was approved by the Board of the Seimas.

The event will be presented by Loreta Graužinienė, Speaker of the Seimas, and Andrius Mazuronis, Head of the Seimas Delegation to the NATO PA, at 7:10 a.m. on the TV programme Labas Rytas, Lietuva by the national broadcaster LRT.

A press briefing will take place at 11:00 a.m., to be attended by Hugh Bayley, NATO PA President, Andrius Mazuronis, Head of the Seimas Delegation to the NATO PA, and David Hobbs, NATO PA Secretary General. The press briefing will be broadcast live online on the main Seimas website, special session page and television channel Seimas – Tiesiogiai. Working languages of the press briefing will be Lithuanian and English.

The first day of the session will start with the NATO PA plenary sitting, which will be broadcast live from 2:30 p.m. by the LRT radio and television and television channel “Seimas–Tiesiogiai”. The broadcast will also be available on the Seimas website and special NATO PA session page.

The NATO PA plenary sitting will be addressed by Loreta Graužinienė, Speaker of the Seimas; Algirdas Butkevičius, Prime Minister; Hugh Bayley, NATO PA President; Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General and Chairman of the North Atlantic Council; Andriy Parubiy, Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine; and other politicians. The session in Vilnius will see the Assembly to consider three draft documents, namely, the Declaration on NATO Enlargement submitted by the delegation of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, the Declaration on Supporting Ukraine and the Declaration on Transatlantic Relations. The latter document will be presented to the upcoming NATO Summit in Wales (United Kingdom).

Saturday 31 May and Sunday 1 June will be devoted to the meetings of the NATO PA’s political groups and five Committees: Political, Defence and Security, Science and Technology, Civil Dimension of Security and Economics and Security. At the sittings, the Committees will present their reports and discuss the topical issues such as the situation in Afghanistan; Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic integration; challenges of Euro-Maidan; combatting terrorism: building security and democratic institutions; transatlantic security and economics; cyber space security, etc. The Political Committee will hear the report on “NATO Partnerships and the Open-Door Policy of the Alliance” by Rasa Juknevičienė, Deputy Head of the Seimas delegation to the NATO PA. The committees’ sittings will be broadcast live online on the Seimas website and NATO PA session page.

A visit to the NATO Energy Security Centre of Excellence is planned for approx. 20 NATO PA session participants on Sunday.

You can find the NATO PA session programme here.

You can find draft reports of the NATO PA committees (in English) here.

You can find the session programme for media (in English) here.

Jolanta Anskaitienė, Public Relations Unit, tel. +370 5 239 6508, e-mail: [email protected]