Vladimir Putin met with the biggest party in the European parliament
Economic relations between Russia and the European Union need political support, Russian Prime Minister and leader of the United Russia Party Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with Head of the European People's Party - European Democrats Jozeph Daul on Friday.
Mr Putin received a delegation of the biggest group in the European parliament on Saturday, thus launching a series of meetings with the European political parties. On February 2 of this year, he had a talk with the chairman of the European People's Party, Wilfred Martens, when he described cooperation between United Russia and the Old World's conservative parties as promising. On October 3, 2008 Mr Putin had a talk with the leader of the Socialists in the European Parliament, Martin Schultz.
Establishing closer ties between the biggest Russian party and the European MPs has to do not only with the more active role United Russia has been playing outside the country. As the leader of UR, Vladimir Putin devotes most of his time to his job as Prime Minister, and both the government and the party consider economic relations to be a priority. It was not accidental that the United Russia delegates in the Duma proposed holding a conference on the Nord Stream Project: The Parliamentary Dimension in St Petersburg on March 30-April 2, to which the representatives of the national parliaments of all the countries concerned and the leaders of the European parliament have been invited. The Nord Stream gas pipeline project has met with a mixed reaction on the European continent, especially in the Baltic countries. Vladimir Putin called on the "European Democrats" to provide political support for business relations. Because the EPP-ED is composed of 288 deputies, or 37% of the European Parliament, and represents all the 27 EU member states, cooperation with that group of deputies is particularly important.
"Work with the European parliamentarians is the most promising line of cooperation with Europe," Vladimir Putin said during the Saturday meeting. The Russian Prime Minister sees the interaction between Russia and the European Union as highly promising. Bilateral trade hit an all-time high of over 300 billion roubles last year. Russia is the third biggest exporter to the EU countries and the fourth biggest importer. "We buy more than 107 billion dollars worth of your products every year and we understand very well what it means in practice. In practice it means that the level of cooperation and interdependence is rising," Vladimir Putin said. True, the Russians and the Europeans do not always see eye-to-eye on certain problems (the gas war is the latest example), and for this reason, contacts should be expanded, Mr Putin believes. It is also necessary "to conduct the discussion in a more substantive way, proceeding not from unconfirmed data fed by the media and emotions, but from facts and a clear vision of the ongoing processes, authentic information, and objective data".
The head of the delegation, Jozeph Daul, did not react to the Russian Prime Minister's complaints. He merely stated that Europe is a calm force that ensures peace in the world. "Political Europe comes forward without undue self-confidence and self-fears," Mr Daul stressed.
Moscow issue
Pierre Sidibe