Andrius Kubilius, Lithuanian candidate for the position of Secretary General of the Council of Europe, will attend meetings in Helsinki, London and Brussels
Press release, 18 February 2019
Following a decision of the Board of the Seimas, Mr Andrius Kubilius, Member of the Seimas, will attend the meetings as part of the campaign for the election of the Secretary General of the Council of Europe. The meetings will take place in Helsinki, Republic of Finland, on 18–19 February 2019; London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, on 19–20 February, and Brussels, Kingdom of Belgium, from 20 to 22 February 2019.
In Helsinki, Mr Kubilius will meet with Matti Anttonen, Finnish Permanent State Secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Matti Vanhanen, Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Eduskunta. Next, in London, he will have a meeting with Sir Alan Duncan, Minister of State for Europe and the Americas at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of the United Kingdom. Finally, in Brussels, Andrius Kubilius will meet with representatives of the European Union institutions and the media and participate in the conference on the future of Europe titled Protecting the Rule of Law: What’s in the EU arsenal.
In its meeting on 27 December 2018, the Government decided to nominate Andrius Kubilius for the position of Secretary General of the Council of Europe.
The CoE is a political organisation founded in 1949 and aimed primarily at the promotion of shared democratic principles in Europe on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights and other international documents and the protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law. Today the CoE has 47 Member States.
The Secretary General of the CoE is elected for a five-year term and is responsible for the strategic planning of the activities, execution of the budget, implementation of decisions by the Committee of Ministers, and management of the daily activities of the organisation and its Secretariat. On the annual basis, the Committee of Ministers approves the Intergovernmental Programme of Activities drafted by the Secretary General in line with the operational priorities of the CoE .The Secretary General is also responsible for the implementation of the Programme.
Jolanta Anskaitienė, Adviser, Press Office, Information and Communication Department,
tel. +370 239 6508, e-mail: [email protected]