Voting and Remarks by Dr Jānis Vucāns

Voting and Remarksby Dr Jānis Vucāns, Chair of the BSPCDear colleagues,Ladies and gentlemen,I hereby open the Closing Session of the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.I hereby open the Closing Session of the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.I would like to thank all of you for the energetic, productive and I think also synergetic work during the past couple of days. We have had a constructive discussion, and I think that we have succeeded in finding answers to many questions.However, some of our main tasks are still ahead – among others the adoption of the resolution of this conference. All delegations received the first draft of the resolution in early July and then were given time until 19 August to send in additional proposals, and many delegations did so.I would like to remind that according to the Rules of Procedure of the BSPC any proposals received after this deadline were not taken into account in the preparing of the final list. There are a number of administrative matters that we have to address first. As always, I would like to remind everyone that we can only take decisions by unanimous consent.Firstly, the Conference is invited to adopt changes to the BSPC Rules of Procedure. These reflect changes to the BSPC Chairmanship. Can everyone agree to the new Rules of Procedure? ... Is there any vote against? ... No vote, so it means unanimously agreed. I recognize that the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference has agreed to the new Rules of Procedure.Next, the Conference is invited to adopt the Work Programme for 2016 - 2017. Can everyone agree to the new Work Programme? ... Is there any vote against? ... No votes against. It means unanimously agreement. Thank you.Ladies and gentlemen,now we can turn to the resolution of the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference. My thanks to all the delegations for their hard work, especially to the members of the Drafting Committee. They worked hard, seeking compromises acceptable to all parties and drafting the final version of the resolution, which is now in front of you. As always, it wasn’t an easy way to come to an agreement, but to my mind in the end it was worth to go this hard way.Dear colleagues,the distributed resolution includes also the matters related to the title of this conference, relation between Labour Market and Education in Baltic Sea Region. Therefore during this last session I would like to mention only two points from this resolution regarding competitiveness in the Baltic Sea Region by linking Education and Labour Market.Point 19 is saying the partners agree to strengthen the contact between schools, universities and businesses in order to make sure that university education and vocational education and training are closely and concretely oriented towards labour market and to identify as well as to prevent labour market mismatches. To my mind, this sentence is very important.And the second one, point 25 from resolution, support business and education cooperation for a sustainable economic area in the Baltic Sea Region, especially a systematic exchange of expertise in the labour market and education sectors. This cooperation between business and education sector is very, very important to go forward and to make our region competitive in the global scale.Of course there are a lot of other sentences, but I mention those two because those directly relate to the theme of our conference.Dear colleagues,in the distributed resolution, you will find the unanimous agreement by the members of the Drafting Committee and I would like to remind everyone that just like every year, the resolution needs to find the unanimous agreement by every BSPC member. With your adoption of the resolution of the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary conference you also agree to the administrative matters included in the resolution, including the Work Programme 2016 - 2017 and the adapted Rules of Procedure. And now I ask you to vote by raising your hand and I ́m asking:Can everyone agree to the resolution of the 25th Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference? Who is for such final resolution? ...Thank you. Are any votes against? ... No. Thank you. It means that we have adopted the final resolution.Thank you everyone for your great work during this conference, as well as during this past year and not only but also for the whole period when everybody of you had been involved in the activities of BSPC. I hope that the contents of the just adopted resolution will be acted on by our governments, ministries and other institutions around the Baltic Sea.I truly appreciate the work we have done here together. I am sure that the Hamburg presidency will strengthen the BSPC even further. I expect that everybody of you knows that the Hamburg Parliament will be the next presiding parliament in the BSPC for the year 2016 - 2017.Additional information is that the Drafting Committee agreed to give the honour to the Parliament of Åland to preside in the BSPC in the year 2017 - 2018 and to the Parliament of Norway to be the presiding Parliament in BSPC in year 2018 - 2019.The Drafting Committee also decided that the BSPC President for the next year will be Carola Veit and we will have two Vice Presidents, Jörgen Pettersson from the Parliament of Åland, and myself, Jānis Vucāns.And now, I have a pleasure to give our floor to the incoming President of the BSPC Ms Carola Veit, President of the Hamburg Parliament, for presentation of incoming presidency.Please, the floor is yours