Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2006-11-15-Speech-3-238"
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"en.20061115.18.3-238"2
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"Mr President, the Commission is most grateful to Mr Stubb for his report, and welcomes the opportunity for a debate. There is no mistaking his commitment and determination. The Baltic Sea is a very important sea for the European Union, since eight of the nine countries with a Baltic shoreline are EU Member States. It is a meeting point for the European Union and Russia. With this in mind, the new Northern Dimension Policy Framework Document, to be adopted later this month, will have as its priority areas the Baltic and Barents Seas, Kaliningrad and the Arctic.
The new Northern Dimension policy will be the regional expression, in the North, of the EU-Russia Common Spaces, with the full involvement of Norway and Iceland. The Northern Dimension will also have its own priorities: health and social wellbeing and the protection of indigenous peoples in the High North, as well as particular emphasis on the environment and culture.
A common new Northern Dimension policy implies that all the partners will be bound by the same goal: its success. Accordingly, cofinancing will be the rule, particularly in a context of an increasingly wealthy Russian Federation.
The Northern Dimension should not only be project-oriented, it should ensure a continuous policy dialogue on the various challenges and opportunities. The four Northern Regional Councils the Baltic, Barents, Nordic and Arctic Councils are important actors in this dialogue.
The Commission is grateful for the attention Parliament has paid to this policy, and particularly for its resolution of 16 November 2005 ahead of the Northern Dimension ministerial meeting. The Commission also commends the Parliament’s initiative to call for the first conference of a Northern Dimension Parliamentary Forum early next year.
As for a Baltic Strategy within the Northern Dimension that we are discussing today, the Commission will bear this report by Parliament in mind during the discussions at the Northern Dimension event at which the new policy is to be adopted and which will be held back to back with the forthcoming EU-Russia Summit in Helsinki in the presence of the Prime Ministers of Norway and Iceland.
The Northern Dimension is an EU external policy, but it is clearly important to improve the inter-relationship between EU internal policies and the Northern Dimension. That is why the Commission gives such priority to cross-border cooperation, which is one of the main value-added elements of the Northern Dimension. This is indeed a field where internal and external policies necessarily meld together.
The Baltic Sea is now a Northern Dimension priority because we are concerned about its fragile environment and the increasing traffic through its waters, as is correctly highlighted in the report. There are other less tangible threats to the citizens of the Baltic Sea region, including the fight against organised crime, human trafficking, transmissible diseases and unhealthy lifestyles. All of these require our close cooperation with Russia, as well as with Norway and Iceland. Furthermore, we see great potential for economic cooperation across the Baltic Sea with Russia. These are all important objectives to which the Northern Dimension can make a great contribution and which will be elaborated upon in the future. EU internal policies, with their own tasks and their own instruments, will of course also make a major contribution to meeting these challenges in EU Member States in the Baltic Sea region, and these should be debated in the appropriate contexts.
The Commission looks forward to using the new Northern Dimension policy to provide added value in a forum embracing Russia, Norway and Iceland in order to meet the many challenges facing the northern part of our continent. In this context, the Commission welcomes the report by Parliament and will certainly convey the importance of the Baltic Sea region. I will try to integrate relevant elements of this report into the implementation of the new common Northern Dimension policy."@en1
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