The business part of the Three Seas Initiative summit concluded on Thursday with a panel which called for the agreements and plans by the 12 members of the initiative to be made concrete as soon as possible, and agreeing that the group should form a steering committee in order to communicate better with other organisations.
Opening the panel in Ljubljana, Slovenian Foreign Minister Miro Cerar said that now that the summit was ending, “we must deliver, we have had a lot of ideas and projects and we need to come up with some concrete results.”
If the initiative makes concrete results, if it results in things that will connect people better with roads and rails, it will be more persuasive to the people, he said, adding that “this is our main task now.”
Cerar’s Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputowicz agreed, saying that “success of the initiative will be measured by kilometres of road” and that the meetings indeed discussed concrete projects of common interest.
As most of the countries of the Three Seas Initiative had “found themselves on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain”, they are less developed than the western countries and have the common interest in the EU, he said.
Retired US General James L. Jones, a former US national security advisor, made the point that while Three Seas was a great strategic initiative which will benefit the region, its nations did not realise what it takes to make it work.
There is a lack of architecture, there is no single point of access, no staff, no website, and there is a lack of a steering group that can respond to inquiries, Jones said, adding that the 16+1 initiative was better organised.
The US feels very tied to Europe as the continents have common values and common history, and believes that the defence of Europe starts in the Black Sea. “We are faced with at least one country which tries to destabilise and fracture the relationship.”
Cerar said that the idea should be considered of creating a steering committee, a “small administrative force that would communicate with other countries”. Perhaps the next step is making a body which would represent the initiative, but not with too much bureaucracy, he added.
Czaputowicz agreed too, saying that practical steps were needed to change the formula of the initiative, including further institutionalisation, a kind of a secretariat. “This practicality is important”, he said, endorsing the idea to make a steering group.
As for investments, Jones said that the US needed evidence that everybody in the initiative was in in terms of funding, and only then the private and public sector would take it seriously.
Czaputowicz said that Poland already had a terminal for US gas which was less expensive than Russian gas, while Cerar said that the initiative needed more investments “from our friends from the US”, noting that most investments were concentrated with a few larger EU states.
“But we should never forget what connects us the most – our common values and the rule of law. Without this glue, Europe is not what it is, or what it used to be,” the Slovenian foreign minister concluded.
The panel also featured Slovenian Minister of Education, Science and Sport Jernej Pikalo, who discussed how to keep talented people in the region. He said maintaining and nurturing talents was one of the biggest issues governments had.
He said countries had to invest in education, which was one of the most complex issues as education was always lagging behind the developments, changes in technology. “We need to create conditions in which talent can thrive”.
Pikalo also pointed to gender balance as one of the most important things. “Women must have equal access and equal opportunities and chances also in terms of the later professional life,” he concluded.
Source/Photo: MZZRS and STA