A delegation of S&D MEPs today held the first ‘Belgrade Consultations’ with Russian parliamentarians from the State Duma and the Federation Council, and discussed different perspectives on effective multilateralism and the challenges of globalisation.

Participants presented and discussed their respective views on how to harness globalisation and how to strengthen multilateral co-operation in order to better respond to international challenges such as migration, climate change, terrorism and security risks and conflicts.
 
If conditions allow, the parliamentarians will meet again twice in the first half of 2018 in order to address other topics of common interest.
 
The discussions underlined the need for parliamentary dialogue between MEPs and their Russian counterparts.

Knut Fleckenstein MEP, S&D co-ordinator for foreign affairs, said:
 
“We need to keep the dialogue open. There is clearly a need for re-building confidence, we have our red lines but we are ready to make efforts to relaunch parliamentary dialogue. It is not necessary to agree with each other in order to maintain a dialogue, but we will not make any progress on what separates us today if we avoid talking to each other. We hope conditions will allow the EU-Russia Parliamentary Co-operation Committee to re-start its work as soon as possible.”

MEPs INVOLVED

FLECKENSTEIN Knut

knut.fleckenstein@ep.europa.eu

+32 2 284 55 48

+33 3 88 17 55 48

http://www.knut-fleckenstein.eu/home.html

S&D PRESS CONTACT

KOMODROMOS, Dimitris

dimitris.komodromos@ep.europa.eu

+33 3 88 17 46 98

+32 2 283 14 59