Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-19-Speech-3-204"
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"en.20031119.8.3-204"2
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".
Mr President, I should first like to turn to Mr Suominen. You are of course quite right that the Baltic basin is one of the most dynamic regions in Europe, if not the most dynamic of all, economically speaking. But it is also a fact that after 1 May 2004 all of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea will be Members of the European Union apart from Russia. There will only be one single Baltic Sea country that is not in the European Union and that will be the Russian Federation. All of the others will be in. All matters relating to Baltic policy will in the future be EU-Russia policy. There is no escaping this. I think that in this respect the initiatives that we have developed vis-à-vis the Russian Federation significantly strengthen the Northern Dimension.
Then you mentioned Kaliningrad. I admit that I am more than surprised by what you said here! The issue of access to and from Kaliningrad was not negotiated by the EU and Russia, but first by the EU and Lithuania and then with Russia. Each individual step was agreed with Lithuania. The study on the possibility of a fast train link is something that we arranged with Lithuania, and the Commission negotiated the conditions for such a study in great detail with the Lithuanian Government. I personally informed the Lithuanian President about the results of this work. The Lithuanian President cannot have told you that he was not aware of it! That is quite impossible. I would ask you to check your information once more, because I am very keen to avoid the impression being given here that we are doing anything that affects Lithuania’s sovereignty in direct relation to Russia. We are not negotiating anything with Russia that affects the sovereignty of Lithuania, our future Member State. I can offer you full reassurance here. There is no one who is more attentive to this than I am and I found the comments that you made on this quite astounding, to put it mildly.
As far as the Arctic region is concerned, which was addressed at the end, I should like to point out that the Second Action Plan, which I have reported on to you, makes specific provision for a major new initiative and activity on the Arctic Window; this will be one of the two major activities in this plan. This is decided; it is down in black and white. I do not quite understand therefore how you can say that the window has been slammed shut again, because the opposite is the case. The window is in fact wide open and I can promise you that the Commission will do its utmost to ensure that all of the opportunities offered by this initiative are fully exploited."@en1
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