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On 26–28 May 2024, the third meeting of the Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) Working Group on Energy Security, Self-sustainability, Resilience and Connectivity was held in Greifswald (Germany). The Baltic Assembly at the meeting was represented by President Andrius Kupčinskas, Vice President Jānis Vucāns and Member of the Security and Defence Committee Meelis Kiili.
“The BSPC Working Group with this meeting and connected visits continued the intensive work towards fostering more active and targeted cooperation of the Baltic Sea countries in energy security, self-sustainability, resilience, and connectivity. The Baltic Assembly attaches great meaning to the topics of the Working Group but also to the benefits that cooperation in a larger regional format can bring,” highlighted President of the Baltic Assembly Andrius Kupčinskas.
During the days of the meeting, the members of the Working Group had the opportunity to visit the world's largest fusion device of the stellarator type “Wendelstein 7-X” at the Greifswald branch of the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics. The visit was complemented by an insightful presentation by Principal Investigator Dr Andreas Dinklage. The Working Group also visited the dismantled Greifswald Nuclear Power Plant (NPP). A proposal to shut down and dismantle the Greifswald NPP was made at the beginning of the 1990s.
Experts from various fields, including cybersecurity, energy, digitalisation and others, contributed to the discussion on how to improve the cooperation of the Baltic Sea counties in these areas. Dr Andreas Noack from the University of Applied Sciences Stralsund discussed with the parliamentarians the role of cybersecurity. He said that nowadays it is extremely important to raise security awareness, ensure support for Open Source developers to improve security and consider social engineering in security monitoring tools. Thomas Luschtinetz who works at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Stralsund University of Applied Sciences, and the Institute for Renewable Energy Systems elaborated on perspectives and cooperation in the Baltic Sea region in hydrogen development.
Head of the European Commission Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology Franco Accordino gave insights into strengthening the backbone connectivity of the European Union. He presented the White Paper “How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?” which presents possible scenarios going forward to address those challenges, attract investment, foster innovation, increase security and achieve a true Digital Single Market.
The BSPC Working Group on Energy Security, Self-sustainability, Resilience and Connectivity was established acting on the initiative of the Baltic Assembly at the 32nd BSPC held on 27-29 August 2023 in Berlin. The main topics planned to be discussed during the meetings of the working group include 1) joint measures towards an open, competitive, fully integrated and resilient regional energy market; 2) building interconnected, sustainable and resilient transport systems together; and 3) accelerating the transition to a single digital market resilient to internal and external threats. The next meeting of the Working Group is planned for 24-26 November 2024 in Norway.
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© Secretariat of the Baltic Assembly
