On 27–29 November 2013, the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania will hold its final parliamentary dimension event of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, i.e. the Meeting of the Chairpersons of the Committees on Foreign Affairs of Parliaments of the European Union and the Parliamentary Forum for Democracy entitled “Parliaments for democracy: towards more ambitious global cooperation”. The Meeting will be attended by parliamentary representatives from EU Member States, candidate countries and the European Parliament, representatives from the Eastern Partnership countries and members of the Parliamentary Forum for Democracy. The Meeting will focus on the Eastern Partnership on the eve of the Vilnius Summit and the lessons learnt from transitional democracy.

Opening addresses will be made by Prof. Benediktas Juodka, Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; Emanuelis Zingeris, Chair of the Parliamentary Forum for Democracy; and Petras Auštrevičius, Deputy Speaker of the Seimas.

The first session of the Meeting will cover the following topics: “EU Eastern Partnership: on the eve of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius”, “The view of the Eastern Partnership countries” and “The Ukrainian course”. In the first session, speeches will be delivered by Linas Linkevičius, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Lithuania; Igor Corman, Speaker of the Parliament of the Republic of Moldova; and Elmar Brok, Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the European Parliament. Speeches by Pat Cox, Member of the European Parliament monitoring mission to Ukraine and former President of the European Parliament, as well as by chairs of foreign affairs committees from Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Ukraine will also be delivered in this session.

During the second session, the participants of the Meeting will share the experience of and lessons learnt from transitional democracies. Politicians and well-known public figures from all over the world will discuss the development of democracy and problems faced by transitional countries on their road to democratic reforms. In this part of the event, speeches will be delivered by Karim Ghellab, Speaker of the House of Representatives of Morocco; Prof. Vytautas Landsbergis, Chair of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania, Member of the European Parliament; and Prof. Marija Aušrinė Pavilionienė, Member of the Seimas of the Republic of Lithuania, Chair of the Women’s Parliamentary Group and Coordinator of COSAC Women’s Forum.

Interventions by Anatoliy Liabedzka, Belarusian opposition representative, Chairman of the United Civil Party; Borys Tarasyuk, Member of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine; and others are expected during the discussion sessions.

A press conference of the participants of the Meeting is scheduled at 1.10 p.m. on Thursday, 28 November 2013 (Press Conference Hall, Building 2, Seimas). The press conference will be broadcast live on the LRT television channel.

The details of the programme can be found here.

Both the first and the second session of the Meeting “Parliaments for democracy: towards more ambitious global cooperation” will be broadcast live on the LRT Culture channel, the TV programme Seimas – tiesiogiai (Engl. Seimas live),, on the website of the Seimas and on the website of the parliamentary dimension of the Lithuanian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

Monika Kutkaitytė, Public Relations Unit, tel. +370 5 239 6666, e-mail: [email protected]