Action Plan for strengthening the cross-border cooperation

The members of the working group held their first session in Arkhangelsk on Tuesday, November 16. The meeting was chaired by the State Secretary of the Norwegian Ministry of trade and industry Rikke Lind and the Deputy Minister of the Russian Ministry of regional development Maksim Travnikov.

In his greeting speech Travnikov stressed that the members of the working group have common opinion towards all issues of further development of cross-border and regional cooperation. He said that within the nearest two months the working group should concentrate on working out of the program of cross-border cooperation with concrete projects and measures.

Lind and Travnikov offered to focus on development of the transport routes, sea ports infrastructure, roads management, increasing of efficiency of the border crossing points.

State Secretary Lind stressed that nowadays situation in the trade and economic cooperation between Norwegian and Russian regions is far from its real potential and the authorities should stress on establishing good conditions for activation of direct economic relations between the regions.

One of the ways to achieve this goal Rikke Lind sees in increasing of the efficiency of the Norwegian – Russian border crossing point Storskog-Borisoglebsk, in particular – the prolongation of its opening hours.

State Secretary Lind noted that Norway is interested in future development of the Northern Sea Route.

The meeting participants in Arkhangelsk also discussed the legal framework of Norwegian-Russian interregional and cross-border cooperation and agreed that the last achievements in this field in general possess all necessary basic conditions and the legal base meets contemporary demands.

Nevertheless the representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs noted that it could be important in the future to launch another agreement regulating temporal labor activity of the citizens of one country on the territory of the other one.

The members of the working group discussed the social-economic situation in the northern regions of two countries and noted that all regions steadily and successfully overcome the crisis consequences. They also stressed a necessity of closer cooperation in the field of indigenous people support and offered to work out some joint projects in this field.

Before February next year the working group will prepare the action plan for strengthening of cross-border cooperation which will be presented at the meeting of Norwegian-Russian Intergovernmental Commission on Economic, Industrial and Scientific-Technical Cooperation.

Text: Andrey Shalyov