Meeting in Riga on 23 September 2013, the chairs of the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian parliamentary committees on European affairs held consultations in the run-up to the Conference of Parliamentary Committees for Union Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union (L COSAC).

The meeting attended by Petras Auštrevičius, Deputy Speaker of the Seimas and Deputy Chair of the Committee on European Affairs, focused on the upcoming Eastern Partnership Summit. The representatives of the European affairs committees issued a joint statement where they emphasised the importance of signing association agreements with aspiring states and called on the European Union institutions to respond to the pressure exerted by the Russian Federation on the Eastern Partnership countries as the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius was drawing closer.

Parliamentarians pointed out that frozen conflicts in some of the Eastern Partnership countries were exploited to weaken their sovereignty and independence. Therefore, there was a need for greater involvement of the EU institutions in finding solutions to these conflicts.

Matas Maldeikis, Head of the Office of the Committee on European Affairs, tel. +370 5 239 6864, e-mail: [email protected]