The participants, elected legislators from the Baltic
Sea States
Parliaments of Free Hanseatic City of Bremen, Denmark,
Finland, Federal Republic of Germany, Free and Hanseatic City of
Hamburg, Republic of Karelia, Latvia, Leningrad, Lithuania, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,
Norway, Poland, Council of Federation of the Federal Assembly of
the Russian Federation, State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the
Russian Federation, City of St. Petersburg, Schleswig-Holstein,
Sweden, Åland Islands, Baltic Assembly, European Parliament, Nordic
Council.
, assembling in St Petersburg, Russian Federation, 26-28 August
2012,
discussing co-operation in the Baltic Sea Region,
environmental health and energy cooperation, a safe and healthy
Baltic Sea, and health, social welfare and economic development,
A. stressing
that parliamentary cooperation in the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) contributes
to democratic, transparent and inclusive political processes, as
well as to practical and positive results in people´s everyday life;
B. commending the close, pragmatic and
productive interaction between the Council of the Baltic Sea States
(CBSS) and BSPC, including a far-reaching synchronization of political
priorities and a continuous exchange at all levels;
C. appreciate the organization of a first
Youth Parliament called «Baltic Sea Youth Session» in Berlin in
April 2012 within the framework of the German CBSS Presidency;
encourage the following CBSS Presidencies to continue with the organization
of those Baltic Sea Youth Sessions and to support a participation
of five delegates of this Youth Parliament in the annual BSPC Conferences
to include young people into the parliamentary discussion about
the future of the Baltic Sea Region,
call on the governments in the Baltic Sea Region,
the CBSS and the EU, as well as other organizations, civil society,
private sector, communities and NGOs,
1. to promote interaction
and cooperation in the implementation of the North-West Russia Socio-Economic
Development Strategy by the Russian Federation and other overall
policies of the Baltic Sea Region, such as the EU Strategy for the
Baltic Sea Region and the Northern Dimension
2. to provide continued support to the
Northern Dimension policy and its further diversification into new
operational branches in order to involve all stakeholders in the
Region on an equal footing and to ensure access to EU projects for
all relevant stakeholders where appropriate;
3. to provide stable and long-term resources
to CBSS, and to continue to support an ongoing dialogue with BSPC
on political priorities as well as operational activities;
4. to provide in due course resources for
the full implementation of the SEBA project (Modernization Partnership
for the South Eastern Baltic Area), aiming at enhancing cooperation
in fields such sustainable development, tourism, public-private
partnerships and youth;
5. to encourage a deliberate division
of labour between stakeholders in the Region, aiming at strengthening
their comparative advantages, synchronizing their priorities, and
complementing each other´s competencies; cooperative initiatives
such as the «Maritime Joint Event» in 2011 and 2012 should be promoted
as a role model for other subject areas;
6. to promote and protect tolerance, mutual
respect and freedom of expression, and to strengthen the human rights
throughout the entire Baltic Sea Region and its neighbourhood;
7. to continue efforts towards a gradual
elimination of obstacles for the movement of persons in the Region
in accordance with outcomes of the EU-Russia cooperation in the
framework of a visa dialogue, and to pursue the efforts for a gradual
phasing out of the visa regime between the EU and Russia, while
facilitating as much and as quick as possible visa facilitation
for instance for academics, students, researchers, sportsmen, trainees
and youth;
8. to ratify, for those
states that have not already done so, the Espoo Convention (the
EU Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary
Context);
9. to ratify, for those states that have
not already done so, the Convention on Ballast waters (International
Convention for the Control and Management of Ships´ Ballast Water
and Sediments of 2004);
10. to fulfill all commitments under the
HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, adopted by the Governments of the
Baltic Sea Region in Krakow in 2007, aimed at restoring a good environmental
status of the Baltic Sea by 2021; to further raising the level of
ambition at the HELCOM ministerial meeting in fall 2013 for reducing
the outlet of phosphorous and nitrates into the Baltic Sea; and
to carry out active efforts to coordinate activities with OSPAR
in regard of promoting initiatives to decrease waste from vessels
in the Baltic Sea and in the North-West Atlantic Ocean and the English
Channel;
11. within the framework of improving health and
rehabilitating the ecosystem of the Baltic Sea, to carry out work
aimed at removing the sewage waste pollution sources in the drainage basin
of the Baltic Sea, including the modernization of sewage systems
and municipal sewage treatment facilities;
12. to contribute to the introduction of
best agricultural practices and technologies in animal waste conversion
and poultry farming;
13. to promote the decrease of influx of
biogenic substances into the Baltic Sea by means of introducing
best agricultural practices and technologies to manage waste from
animal farming, including poultry farming, and by gradually decreasing
use of polyphosphates in synthetic detergents.
14. to promote better health and rehabilitation
of the Baltic Sea ecosystem by improving recycling, creating new
landfills for municipal and industrial waste with consequent reclamation
of land, and by removing obsolete pesticide storages;
15. to welcome work within the trilateral
Project of the Year of the Gulf of Finland, aimed at implementation
of a set of measures to improve environmental health of the Baltic
Sea, namely through research and environmental protection efforts
that promote better environmental status of the Baltic Sea ecosystem;
16. to make sustained efforts to promote
and develop green growth, energy efficiency and renewable energy,
and to adopt nationally adapted binding targets for energy efficiency;
17. to work actively within the IMO to
improve the technical requirements, adopted earlier, in respect
of the energy efficiency of new sea vessels and development of globally
binding technical and/or operational regulations in order to decrease
emissions of greenhouse gases from the existing vessels;
18. to support BASREC (Baltic Sea Region
Energy Cooperation) and implement the commitments for 2012-2015
made by the BASREC Ministerial Meeting 14-15 May 2012, in order
to develop sustainable energy systems in the region and to integrate
energy markets and energy infrastructure;
19. to lessen the dependence on fossilized
fuel by exploring renewable energy sources;
20. to promote education, research and
development on green growth and energy efficiency, and to take action
to disseminate information, exchange best practices and raise awareness
of both environmental and economic gains and ways of saving energy;
21. to support activities of the CBSS Expert Group
on Sustainable Development – Baltic 21, focused on four strategic
areas: climate change, sustainable consumption and production, innovation
and education for sustainable development, sustainable urban and
rural development;
22. to provide political incentives and
innovative financial schemes to initiate pilot projects and investments
in energy efficiency measures;
23. to promote green public procurement
(GPP) at all levels of public administration, ensuring that GPP
standards provide a level playing field for businesses and do not
lead to competitive disadvantages for small and medium-sized enterprises;
24. to expand information
exchange, joint planning and dissemination of best practices between maritime
authorities in order to manage the growing vessel traffic in the
Baltic Sea;
25. to develop real-time maritime surveillance information
and e-navigation technologies in order to improve vessel traffic
management and augment the joint preparedness against accidents;
26. to strengthen the competitiveness of
clean shipping in the Baltic Sea Region by using appropriate targeted
incentives;
27. to promote research and innovation
in order to develop competencies in the areas of shipping safety,
energy efficiency, emission reductions, alternative propulsion technologies
and renewable energies in order to strengthen the competitiveness
of the Baltic Sea Region in the global competition;
28. to carry on further actions aiming
at developing a joint macro-regional prevention and preparedness
approach towards major hazards and emergencies at sea and on land,
and to promote research and to develop technologies aimed at oil
spills response in ice conditions, as well as in bad weather and
visibility conditions
29. to strengthen the cooperation with
the shipping companies to further prevent and minimize the risk
of accidents and groundings;
30. to support the implementation of the
tripartite project «The Gulf of Finland Year 2014», with the purpose
of consolidating joint research and conservation efforts of Finland,
Estonia and Russia in order to strengthen the maritime ecosystems
of the Baltic Sea;
31. to support the build-up of a more integrated marine
and maritime knowledge network (environment, fisheries, regional
planning, shipping etc.);
32. to promote artisanal fishery and to
enhance the opportunities for investing in environmentally friendly
kinds of marine tourism;
33. to draft joint objectives in maritime
spatial planning policy (taking the VASAB guidelines into account);
34. to promote the development and strengthening
cross-border cooperation of the Baltic Sea region in order to counter
cross-border crime and security threats at sea;
35. to raise the profile
of health and social well-being on the regional cooperation agenda;
to support the Northern Dimension Partnership in Public Health and
Social Well-being, in order to pursue persistent efforts for improving
health and social well-being taking into account ageing society,
high burden of non-communicable diseases and antimicrobial resistance;
36. to take the resources of the elderly
population into consideration, to allow them to stay on the labour
market, and make use of their abilities in general;
37. to develop a medium- to long-term strategy equipped
with powerful measures to tackle youth unemployment, and to ensure
that existing programmes with this aim are better coordinated; the
aim should be to offer each young person a job, an apprenticeship,
additional continuing education or a combination of employment and vocational
training after a maximum of four months of unemployment. Working
life must not begin with a longer period of unemployment;
38. to encourage an intensified cooperation
between schools and businesses at local level, in order to develop
initiatives for facilitating the transition from school to working
life for young people;
39. to further develop measures to foster
education, vocational training, skills development and life-long
learning, with the aim of meeting the demand for skilled workers
and creating new employment opportunities, and in this respect intensify
the use of the concept of dual education, and launch initiatives
to improve the prospects of long-term employment to unqualified
and unemployed young people;
40. to work towards mutual recognition
of vocational training in the Baltic Sea Region countries, and to
develop the quality of vocational training in the region according
to best practices, research results and society´s future needs;
41. to reduce as far as possible obstacles
to the mobility of labour and enterprises by actively supporting
cooperation between the border regions and between the existing
cross border information centers;
42. to support and encourage the Baltic
Sea Labour Forum (BSLF) as a platform for exchange of experience
and communication between the key labour market actors in the BSR,
including helping the BSLF in promoting social dialogue, tripartite
structures and cooperation as crucial elements of sustainable economic
growth and social development;
43. to promote cooperation on modernization
and innovation with a focus on cluster growth and, in the long term,
on the establishment of regional partnerships particularly on environment
and sustainable development;
44. to create a public-private partnership
(PPP) network aimed at developing a «Baltic PPP» as a sustainable
growth platform with a regional direct investment funds and active
educational involvement;
45. to support the development of sustainable tourism
on land and at sea, including the improvement of mobility and accessibility
by other means than motorized private transports, and a strict regulation
of the use of conservation areas;
46. to develop concepts that offer age-friendly conditions
at the workplace and better access to life-long learning programs
also for the elderly population;
47. to develop concepts aiming to improve
the access of particularly disadvantaged groups to the job market;
48. to support programs for municipalities
in their strategies for coping with socio-demographic change;
49. to develop quality criteria as indicators
of a sustainable employment policy;
50. promote efforts to gain more extensive knowledge
of the nature and scope of new forms of trafficking in human beings
such as trafficking for begging, trafficking for criminal activities
like theft and fraud, and trafficking for identity theft, and to
strengthen legislative and operational means of identifying and
combating these forms for trafficking in human beings;
51. adopt the BSPC Work
Programme for 2012-2013;
52. grant Observer status to Skåne Regional County
Council;
53. welcome with gratitude the kind offer
of the Parliament of Estonia to host the 22nd Baltic Sea Parliamentary
Conference in Pärnu on 25-27 August 2013.