Alla Ramilova,
PhD, Managing Director of the Swiss Association ‘Alpine
Arena for Friendship’, Coordinator SRG PA OSCE conference in
Switzerland
Restrictive measures taken by most governments to curb the
spread of the Covid 19 pandemic have primarily affected
cross-country mobility and the physical movement of goods,
services and labor. The prospect and risks of globalization
have become a major topic of discussion for the
international experts community. In this light, global
inter-regional projects of transport connectivity or
connectivity (a term widely used in the world) have acquired
special significance and new geopolitical facets. The most
significant of these projects is certainly the Chinese Belt
and Road Initiative.
The themes of East-West relations and building a new
dialogue in post- Covid 19 situation were the focus of a
series of high-level videoconferences that took place this
summer in various representative formats. Two of them
directly touched upon the relationship between Europe and
China, as well as the New Silk Road (Belt and Road
Initiative).
The New Silk Road continues... The 3rd Belt and Routes
Initiative Conference
Almost imperceptible in the Western information space, but
very important in terms of China's geopolitical positioning,
the third Belt and Road Initiative Conference ‘Belt and Road
International Cooperation to fight COVID 19 with Solidarity’
was held online on June 18th.
Ministers of Foreign Affairs and heads of relevant
ministries from 25 countries took part in the video
conference. Those were majorly European, Asian, African and
Latin American countries, where infrastructure projects of
the Belt and Road Initiative are being actively implemented.
From the side of the European Union countries, the Minister
of Foreign Affairs of Hungary took part in the talks. The
videoconference also featured speeches of the Heads of
international agencies of Belarus, Russia and Serbia.
Tedros Abhanom, WHO Director General, was an important guest
of the videoconference whose participation, to a certain
extent, set the tone of the whole event.
When addressing the participants of the videoconference, he
firstly noted that the Belt and Road Initiative certainly
had the potential to stimulate the development of a united
universal health care system accessible to all people.
Tedros Abhanom also drew attention to the important
perspective and potential of the Silk Road Health concept in
providing partnerships to combat the virus as well as
improving infrastructure and access to health services, such
as diagnostic and treatment.
The conference came to an end with the Joint Statement of
the Highlevel Video Conference on Belt and Road
International Cooperation. The essence of this message was
that the participants would continue their efforts to
promote international cooperation, including cooperation of
a fundamentally new quality within the Belt and Road
Initiative.
Important principles were underlined in this context,
including equal participation and transparency, efforts to
promote a green economy and clean energy, adherence to
international standards, a humancentered approach and
sustainable development.
This confirmed the intention of the participants to
undertake joint efforts in the fight against Covid 19 and to
move towards the creation of the Health Silk Road, implying
a timely exchange of experience and achievements in the
diagnostic and treatment of the virus, the promotion of
joint research and of international dialogue between
healthcare professionals.
It is important to note the strong emphasis placed on the
need to support the multimodality of communication routes
and the sustainability of transport systems.
The Role of the OSCE PA in International Connectivity
Projects
The June meeting of the Silk Road Support Group (SRG) of the
OSCE PA was held online. It is important to recall that the
Group was established in 2017 in Minsk at the initiative of
17 delegations of member states of the OSCE PA. Today, the
Group includes 27 delegations with representatives of
Western and Eastern Europe as well as South-West and Central
Asia. Most delegations belong to countries, which
participate in projects of the China Belt and Road
Initiative or intend to do so in the future.
During the online session, the leaders of the OSCE PA,
President George Tsereteli and Secretary General Roberto
Montella, expressed their strong appreciation for the
results of the Group's work. They noted a particular
interest of the participated delegations for key themes of
the Group's activities such as relations with China and the
topic of ‘connectivity’ in regional contexts.
With this in mind, the leadership of the OSCE PA saw
potential to formalize the Group's activities within the
Parliamentary Assembly by offering the delegations, which
are members of the Assembly the possibility to discuss the
creation of an ad hoc commission dealing with aspects of
regional ‘connectivity’ in Europe and Asia.
The President of the SRG and Head of the Azerbaijani
delegation to the OSCE PA, Azay Guliyev, was positive about
the prospect of institutionalizing the Group's work. He also
emphasized the importance of preserving the Group's
receptivity and conserving the results, which have already
been achieved during the work of the SSG.
It seems that the decision to establish an ad hoc commission
can be taken as soon as at this winter's session of the OSCE
PA which will be held in Vienna in February 2021.
In this context we were curious to know the opinion of the
Italian delegation, a country that was one of the first EU
states to join the Chinese Belt and Road initiative.
When commenting on the prospects of creating a new ad hoc
commission of the OSCE PA, the Head of the Italian
delegation to the OSCE PA Paolo Grimoldi noted:
‘
I do not see the expediency of automatic transformation of
the informal Silk Road Group of the OSCE PA into an official
body of the Assembly. To some extent, this would mean
legitimizing the Chinese Initiative in the OSCE
Parliamentary Assembly. And as we all know, many European
countries not only have not joined the Chinese Initiative,
but also actively criticize it for its lack of transparency
and for ignoring international standards.
As for the Silk Road Group (SRG), established in 2017 at the
initiative of parliamentary delegations of countries
participants or those interested in participating to the
China Belt and Road Initiative, its informal status gives it
the opportunity to monitor BRI processes and projects
without imposing formal commitments on the entire OSCE PA’.
‘
On the other hand,’ continues the head of the Italian
delegation, ‘it seems to me important and timely to
establish a special ad hoc commission within the OSCE PA
devoted to connectivity issues in general. This topic is
extremely relevant not only from the economic and political
point of view, but also from the point of view of regional
security. There is a great number of different
infrastructure projects in the OSCE ‘area’: railway,
highway, sea, pipeline and many of them affect the trade
turnover and dynamics of economic relations between the
countries, some of them are even in the center of
geopolitical confrontations. From our point of view, it
would be very important if all these discussions were at the
center of attention of the OSCE PA and were discussed by all
parliamentary delegations.
In that case, the Silk Road Group, while maintaining its
informal status, could be coordinated by the new ad hock
commission and supported by the OSCE PA Secretariat.’
Filippo Lombardi, former president of the Senate of the
Swiss Parliament and former member of the OSCE PA's bureau,
also has a similar view. As vice president of the Silk Road
Support Group, the Swiss politician has been actively
involved in the formation of the Group since its first days.
‘
From my point of view,’ emphasizes Filippo Lombardi, ‘in
the process of forming the SRG and its agenda, we managed,
to some extent, to implement an important political and
institutional experiment. In the fields of the OSCE PA, an
interdisciplinary body was created that brought together all
interested delegations and allowed for representatives of
the executive power, international expert community,
international institutions and business community to be
involved in its activities. And most importantly, the
principle of public-private partnership was applied for the
first time. Private sponsors were involved in the
organization of the events, which relieved parliamentary
budgets of the burden and expanded the horizons of the
Group's activity.
I absolutely share the opinion of Azay Guliyev, the
President of the SRG, that it is very important not to lose
what was created within the Group and to ensure continuity
and coordinated activities between different bodies of the
OSCE PA.’
With the participation of Alexandra Furio, University of
St.Gallen
