The Secretary General of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean (PAM), Amb. Sergio Piazzi, held a series of bilateral meetings with other International Parliamentary Organisations on the occasion of the Meeting of the Secretaries General of the Parliaments of the BSEC Member States held in Istanbul, on 6 February 2017. Secretaries General of the Inter-Parliamentary Organizations which have Observer status in the PABSEC also participated at the meeting.
Amb. Piazzi met, among others, with the Secretary General of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, with whom prospects for joint cooperation in the monitoring of electoral processes in the region and for a common initiative in the framework of their Mediterranean partnerships programme for the Southern Mediterranean in Andorra next October, were discussed.
Other fruitful exchanges were held with the Secretaries General of the PA of the Council of Europe and the PA-CIS, and for the first time with the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference.
The main topic of the Istanbul meeting was “Cooperation between Parliamentary Assemblies and challenges for the countries of the Black Sea Region”. The gathering contributed to strengthening the relations between the PABSEC and the other international organizations and offered a good opportunity for trying to find common solutions to various problems, which affect not only the European citizens or the Black Sea Region ones, but the entire world.
In his address, Amb. Piazzi recalled the critical role of PAM in countering terrorism, and that there is a general agreement on the necessity to fight violent extremism in order to contain the proliferation of terrorism. “As recently indicated to PAM by the UN Secretary General, the effective use of parliamentary diplomacy is crucial, and parliamentarians can effectively contribute in aligning national and international legislation to support the effective fight against terrorism. I would encourage all of you to establish an even better structured cooperation among us and with PAM in order to ensure an effective approach to this question”, Amb. Piazzi concluded.