SEECP join effort to cope with financial, energy crises

An informal reunion of heads of Foreign Ministries of the countries part to South-East Europe Cooperation Process (SEECP) took place in Chisinau on January 30. The delegations were unanimous in pleading for the need to join efforts in facing the challenges of the financial and energy crises, and in involving European, regional and international financial and political institutions in the processes, Info-Prim Neo reports. “We attach enhanced attention to strengthening the relations between Moldova and the Regional Cooperation Council, a regional structure having replaced the Stability Pact in South-East Europe. Moldova's priorities in cooperating with this organization highlight a number of important issues: the commercial-economic cooperation, the energy cooperation, the development of infrastructure,” said Moldovan Foreign Minister Andrei Stratan at a news conference in the afternoon. Hido Biscevis, the secretary general of the Regional Cooperation Council, said “the year 2009 will be marked by a series of robust challenges conditioned by a changing international agenda, especially regarding Europe's South-East which is to solve problems related to relations among countries and to internal problems.” “South -Eastern Europe cannot afford losing time to solve these problems. We've just seen how a short-time energy crisis brought it to the daylight that the countries in the region are very vulnerable,” the official said. The SEECP reunion stressed the need to intensify dialogue and cooperation in South-Eastern Europe in all the sectors of common and key interest: social and economic development, infrastructure, justice and domestic affairs, cooperation in security, strengthening human capital, etc. On this occasion, Serbia signed the Memorandum on juridical and judicial guarantees against illegal processing of personal data, inked by the members states at the SEECP reunion of Ministers of Justice and Internal Affairs on October 31, 2008, in Chisinau. The reunion was attended by top dignitaries of the SEECP countries' diplomacies, and representatives of the Czech presidency of the EU and of the future Swedish presidency, officials of the European Commission.