Speech by Karsten Petersen

Page 1:CIL O,oo ss Committee of Senior Officialso The Chairmanae oS Ministry for Foreign Affairso ‘ Asiatisk Plads 2% & DK-1448 Copenhagen K, Denmarks el: +% sen Tel: +45 3392 0476kapete@um.dkDanish Presidency 2008-2009Check against deliveryIntervention by H.E. Ambassador Karsten Petersen, Chairman of the CBSS Committee of SeniorOfficials at the 17" Baltic Sea Parliamentary ConferenceMadame Chair, your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentleman,Dear parliamentarians,1 am honoured and pleased to address this 17" Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference. I do so on behalf ofthe Chairman of the Council of the Baltic Sea States, Danish Foreign Minister Dr. Per Stig Moller, and inmy capacity as Chairman of the CBSS Committee of Senior Officials.I would like to start by thanking Mr. Per Westerberg, the Speaker of the Swedish Riksdag and Ms.Marianne Samuelsson, the Governor of Gotland, for their hospitality, and the opportunity offered to attendthis conference here in the historic town of Visby.Firstly, I would like to underline how much the CBSS appreciates the Baltic Sea ParliamentaryConference as one of the most active players in the Baltic Sea Region and as a Strategic Partner of theCBSS. Regular dialogue with the Baltic Sea parliamentarians is as important for the Danish CBSSPresidency, as it has been for its predecessors. I am glad that our cooperation has become even closerduring the last years.Secondly, while cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region is generally regarded as a success story, it is clearwe have still a lot of work to do. As the main challenges facing us have a cross-border and even globalcharacter, also the solutions must be developed in cooperation between all the stakeholders in a cross-border, regional and global setting.To address these challenges, last year the CBSS started a reform process. Sweden deserves great credit forgiving the decisive push to this, and the outgoing Latvian CBSS Presidency deserves no less praise forguiding the arduous work which culminated with the Riga Reform Declaration in June. I assume that youare familiar with this Declaration. After all, you yourself, Madame Chair, as the President of the BSPCStanding Commitee participated in the Riga Summit. But for the sake of good order let me give you ashort summary of where we are now. Our approach was, first of all, to reconsider the aims of our regionalcooperation and the added value to be derived from it. Then, knowing our common challenges andambitions, we defined the long term priorities for our cooperation and agreed on some structural changesin order to adapt the CBSS to the new needs and tasks - to enable the organisation to take a more forwardlooking, strategic and result orientated actions.From our consultations with other regional organisations (be they governmental, non-governmental,academic or in the private sector), it has become clear that the CBSS is perceived as one of the leadingorganisations facilitating cooperation in the Region. It is important for the CBSS to retain this role.Regular coordination of actions with the CBSS Strategic Partners in the priority areas will create moresynergies and less duplication of effort.Page 2:Also, it is important to mention that the future work in the CBSS will be performed either in expertgroups with a clearly defined mandate and timeframe, or through the projects, which will ensure moreefficient and purposeful actions and results. The Member States have agreed to restructure the CBSSSecretariat in order that in the future it will not only continue to help with expertise in the priority fieldsand facilitate the implementation of the activities by the expert groups; it will also assist in projectdevelopment, implementation and management, as well as the attraction of additional funds.The regular Council meetings as well as the biannual Baltic Sea States Summits will continue as forumsfor discussing the challenges for the Baltic Sea Region at the highest intergovernmental level, thus givingoverall strategic guidance to the activities of the CBSS.It now falls to the Danish Presidency to oversee the process of translating the CBSS reform declarationinto operational reality. The first steps will be to update the Terms of Reference for the organisation, theguidelines for the Secretariat and the rules for third-party participation — hardly trifling matters.Additional details of the Danish Presidency program may be found in the fliers that I have left somewherein this room. An important aspect of this reform is the content of our future cooperation, which from nowon will be based on five long-term priorities. They are: 1) the environment, 2) economic development,notably competitiveness and innovation, 3) energy, 4) education and culture, and finally civil security andthe human dimension. These priorities, in essence, frame the main fields of activities which will lead ustowards the goal of a sustainable regional development.Closer cooperation is needed in all of these fields. One of the main joint challenges is the state ofenvironment. True, the Baltic Sea Region has been one of the global forerunners in placing sustainabledevelopment on the agenda and taking appropriate action. Consequently, progress towards sustainabledevelopment has been achieved on many important issues. However, at the same time many trends in theregion point further away from sustainability. More focused efforts are needed to halt and reverse thesetrends, which in the long run threaten to halt economic development. Let me mention a few of thesetrends: the wasteful use of energy, the immoderate depletion of natural resources, the worsening conditionof the Baltic Sea, increasing pollution from industry transport and other economic activity, and, finally,the regional impact of global warming. Thus, some scenario simulations claim that for our region seriousconsequences of climate change can be anticipated by 2100. This holds for warming and changes inprecipitation patterns, as well as for sea-level rise. In fact, the sea-level rise is an important threat for someBaltic regions. Even though an increase in precipitation might sound like good news, the change in theprecipitation pattern has to be taken into account too. It is most probable that the precipitation maximumwill shift towards the winter months and that drier summers can be expected. This might lead to summerdroughts, which we have already experienced. This implies that the threat of climate change impactscannot be neglected any longer.Concerning energy, among the main challenges that our region is facing are: the improvement of energyefficiency, the development of better use of renewable energy resources and the need to avoid adisproportionate growth in overall energy consumption. These are huge issues and cannot be solved byone country or one organisation alone; we also have to think about the ways how organisations such as theCBSS and BSPC can play their part. It is therefore perfectly timely and appropriate that today’sConference is devoted to these issues. In this connection, let me emphasize that the CBSS welcomes theefforts of the BSPC Working Group on Energy and Climate Change. As you may be aware, energy andclimate constitutes one of the priority fields of action for the Danish CBSS Presidency, with Ms. ConnieHedegaard, the Danish Minister for Climate and Energy being in charge.We can make a difference also in other fields. Educational systems are still far from harmonized, creatingobstacles for academic mobility. Large-scale pan-European integration efforts such as the Bolognaprocess are aiming at bringing the higher education systems closer to each other, but also smaller steps,such as the CBSS Eurofaculty projects, can regionally contribute to this end.Page 3:Improvement is also needed in the field of civil security cooperation, such as combating organised crimeand trafficking in human beings, preventing and preparing for natural and technological emergencies,mitigating the effects of communicable diseases and so on.One crucial issue is how to organise the joint efforts. One of the main frameworks for multilateralcooperation for the Baltic Sea Region countries is undoubtedly the European Union, of which most of theCBSS countries are full members and two others closely connected.At the Riga Summit, the Heads of Government noted with satisfaction the successful development and theconsiderable potential of the Northern Dimension and its partnerships. They also welcomed the increasedattention paid by the EU to the opportunities and challenges of the Baltic Sea Region which is manifestedby the Strategy for the Baltic Sea Region under preparation by the European Union. It would seem to beof utmost importance to aim at consistency between this overall EU strategy and the development ofBaltic Sea regional cooperation in a CBSS framework. Similarly, the European Integrated MaritimePolicy is of great relevance to our region.However, there is still room and need for regional activities outside or alongside the EU. And there areplenty of regional intergovernmental, inter-parliamentary, sub-regional and transnational cooperationforms in the Baltic Sea Region to do this, most of them established in the aftermath of Cold War. Indeed,in our region we find such an array of acronyms for the numerous organisations and networks that somespeak of an “alphabet soup”.An important element is that also non-EU countries, notably Iceland, Norway and Russia, are fullmembers on equal basis in many of these organisations. Moreover, some challenges may best be met inclose cooperation with the neighboring states Ukraine, which is also a CBSS Observer State, and Belarus,as they affect, and are affected by, the developments in the Baltic Sea Region.We have to find effective ways to organise this activity in such a way that we do not create overlaps orunnecessary competition, but real partnerships. I am therefore encouraged to see that also the BSPC iscalling for coordination between intergovernmental and other actors in the Baltic Sea Region,encouraging the evolution of a division of labour and responsibilities in accordance with their respectiveobjectives and competencies. This is a challenging task, but, as Sir Winston Churchill once said, apessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Ichoose to be an optimist — at least, officially.I would like to wish this conference a thorough and fruitful discussion and look forward to the outcomesthat I hope will present a solid platform for the collaborative work that we will need to embark on over thenext ten months.Thank you for your attention.