Southern Baltic Sea Parliamentary Forum

The central subject was the European funding policy but also the perspectives of young people in this region that now was free of a constructed border.

This development was also a topic of the conference about „The perspectives of border crossing cooperation in the southern Baltic after the eastward expansion of the EU“ which took place in October 2003 in Schwerin.

The good bilateral relations between Germany and Poland were the basis for the “Southern Baltic Sea Parliamentary Forum“ that was founded in 2004.

Subsequently, the regional parliaments of Warmia-Masuria and of the “Oblast of Kaliningrad“ joined the Southern Baltic Sea Parliamentary Forum in 2008 as well as the free Hanseatic City of Hamburg in 2009.

Subsequently, the parliamentary forum dealt on a regular basis with the measures announced in the action plan, e.g. the support of intersectionary clusters or the competitiveness of maritime transport.

From then onwards, the parliamentary forum had significantly supported the development of the EU strategy for the Baltic sea region and made comprehensive contributions in the consultation process.

The 14th parliamentary forum with the topic “Agriculture, fishery and food industry – Innovation and cooperation in the southern Baltic region” took place from 12 to 14 June 2016 in Kiel.

These topics are the foundation for the resolutions in which the delegates express demands to the relevant actors in the southern Baltic region.

The delegates regularly establish working groups to prepare the annual conferences and to elaborate on the actual issues with experts.

Working groups were established in the past to deal inter alia with the topics “Integrated EU maritime policies”, “Baltic sea strategies” and “Energy supply”.

The region Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania presided in the working group “Energy supply” which was established at the 5th Parliamentary forum in 2007.