Latvian President and HELCOM Executive Secretary discuss the environmental situation in the Baltic

Helsinki, 23 August (HELCOM Information Service) – President of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers, paid a visit to the HELCOM Headquarters in Helsinki on Wednesday, 22 August as part of his working visit to Finland.

The Helsinki Commission (HELCOM), officially known as the Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission, is an intergovernmental organisation of the nine Baltic Sea coastal countries and the EU working to protect the marine environment of the Baltic Sea from all sources of pollution and to ensure safety of navigation in the region. 

President Zatlers and the accompanying delegation were welcomed by the Executive Secretary of HELCOM Anne Christine Brusendorff and HELCOM Secretariat’s senior staff. During the Meeting, the Executive Secretary briefed the Latvian Head of State on the current situation in the Baltic marine environment, and the joint measures of the HELCOM Member States to reduce pollution to the sea, focusing particularly on the progress made in developing a strategic HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan to restore the good ecological status of the sea by 2021.

President Zatlers stressed that the protection of the Baltic marine environment today “is an important issue for all the coastal countries, including Latvia”. He reminded that, as of July 2007, Latvia holds the Presidency of the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS), and being concerned about the high level of pollution in the Baltic Sea, would like CBSS, as an overall political forum for regional intergovernmental cooperation, to be more involved in solving this problem, providing support to the work of HELCOM. “We would like to hear HELCOM’s opinion, proposals on how CBSS could be involved in solving the environmental and maritime safety problems in the region, what we can do to help improve the overall situation in the Baltic Sea,” said President Zatlers.

Executive Secretary Brusendorff reiterated that HELCOM, as the environmental policy-maker in the Baltic Sea area, has all the environmental knowledge and technical expertise to devise necessary measures for the recovery of the troubled sea, but is looking to CBSS primarily for political support in order to “get HELCOM’s actions through”. “Today, we look very much to CBSS to get political commitment from the coastal countries in order to get an effective HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan to restore the sea”, said Brusendorff. 

It was President Zatlers’ first visit to HELCOM and is seen as symbolically important, reflecting Latvia’s support for HELCOM, as well as commitment to the development of the overarching HELCOM Baltic Sea Action Plan, which is currently scheduled to be adopted at a Ministerial Meeting in November 2007. 

For more information, please contact:

HELCOM Secretariat 

Mr Nikolay Vlasov
Information Secretary
Tel: +358 (0)207 412 635
Fax: +358 (0)207 412 639

E-mail: nikolay.vlasov@helcom.fi