BSPC was invited to share experiences from Nordic and Baltic Sea Region interparliamentary cooperation at a parliamentary seminar on “Legal Status and Political Functions of Interparliamentary Organizations”, arranged by the Regional Secretariat for Parliamentary Cooperation in South-East Europe.
Jan Widberg gave a comparative overview of some key features in the development and work of Nordic Council and the BSPC. “Both organizations were founded against a background of dramatic events, and in a belief in international cooperation and dialogue as central means to prevent conflict and promote prosperity”, he emphasized. “In both cases, a need was felt to construct a platform for open-ended parliamentary dialogue on an equal footing on how to deal with joint challenges and potentials.”
Pointing to similarities and differences between the two organizations, Widberg stressed that ”the decisive factor for the success of a parliamentary recommendation is its realism, relevance and added value.”
Among the lessons learned from the development of the BSPC is the necessity to build a fundamental joint commitment to cooperation as such, to choose a few and relatively easy issues to start up cooperation and learn how to cooperate, to build the organization step-by-step and make it no more complex than what is needed to fulfill its tasks at any time, and to nurture inter-personal relations and networks.
The Parliamentary Cooperation in South-East Europe is the parliamentary dimension of the South-East European Cooperation Process (SEECP). The Parliamentary cooperation was reaffirmed in a Memorandum of Understanding for Inter-Parliamentary Cooperation in SEE signed in 2008 in Sofia, and is being coordinated by a regional secretariat in Sofia. The intention now is to transform the parliamentary dimension into a permanent SEECP Parliamentary Assembly in late fall 2013, and the Sofia seminar was a step in that process.