EU and Russia kick-start forum

Lawmakers from the Russian parliament’s international affairs committee  met for the first time with their EU counterparts in a new forum.

The Russia-EU interparliamentary round table gathered in the Ural city Perm, with MPs from 20 EU member states and Russia discussing the future of the EU-Russia partnership and cooperation agreement.

Russian MPs are "concerned" by the chilly state of EU-Russia relations that concluded the summit in Samara earlier this month, said on Tuesday Konstantin Kosachev, chairman of the international affairs committee at the Russian Duma.

“Russia has not changed much since the signing of the PCA in 1997”, Kosachev said in a televised press conference, “but the EU has enlarged… (with) countries trying to use or abuse their new status as member states in order to push forward their bilateral interests”.

Kosachev referred to an EU-Russia row over Polish meat exports as an example of a “bilateral” issue that is affecting the EU-Russia relationship.

The Perm round-table runs in parallel with an existing EU-Russia parliamentary committee, which brings together European parliament and Duma deputies.

Signed in 1994, the PCA is to expire in November unless both parties agree to upgrade the text or, failing that, to maintain it. 

Asked by TheParliament.com if a violent crackdown on a pro-gay and lesbian rights demonstration in Moscow by the city police over the weekend was discussed at the meeting, Kosachev declined to confirm. 

Over 100 demonstators – including MEPs Marco Cappato, Ottavio Marzocchi and Volker Beck - were beaten by far-right groups as anti-riot police stood by, when they tried to present a letter to the mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov on Sunday.

The letter, signed by 50 MEPs, appealed to Luzhkov's ban on a gay and lesbian rights march scheduled for that day to mark the 14th anniversary the decriminalization of homosexuality in Russia.

“The EU should not demand from Russia something for which it has yet to develop a common approach”, Kosachev said.

He was referring to a decision by the Lithuanian authorities last week to forbid the so-called EU diversity truck to enter the capital Vilnius.

Gay rights issues are “not as important” for the Duma as Russian ethnic minority rights’ in the Baltic states, he added. 

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