| Author (Corporate) | EurActiv |
|---|---|
| Series Title | EurActiv |
| Series Details | 14.5.09 |
| Publication Date | 14/05/2009 |
| Content Type | News |
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See also: Jet lag tops EU agenda at yearly Russia summit Russian and European Union officials had a choice of 11 time zones when they sat down in March to choose a venue for the annual Russia-EU summit. They chose the far eastern city of Khabarovsk, 25km from the Chinese border and nine time zones from Brussels. It is hardly Russia’s European face; off the beaten track, even by Russian standards. If you fly there from Moscow, the first day will be lost to jet lag. President Dmitry Medvedev has recently taken to video conferencing with the far eastern region’s bureaucrats as a saner alternative to flying there. “You lose two whole days when you go out to the far east,” he told two governors from the region during a televised internet chat on the presidential laptop. Bleary-eyed EU summit delegates had no such luxury on Thursday as they wandered the streets of the pleasant Siberian town. “I’ve lost the sense of day and night,” said one at about 8pm – or 11am Brussels time. One of the favourite activities of the jet-lagged attendees on Thursday was swapping stories about how Khabarovsk came to be chosen as the venue. Was it a fiendish plot to disorientate the easily divided Europeans ahead of tricky negotiations on Russian gas? It seems not. The Kremlin, apparently, had not wanted to choose the location for fear of offending powerful regional governors who were gunning for the honour of hosting it, “so they said ‘let the Europeans choose’”, according to an east European diplomat. José Manuel Barroso, European Commission president, and Vaclav Klaus, Czech president – the Czechs hold the revolving EU presidency – had a look at the list of prospective sites before Mr Klaus picked Khabarovsk, because “he hadn’t been there before and wanted to see it”, according to a diplomat, who asked not to be named. The city, like virtually every Siberian frontier town, boasts pleasant tree-lined central streets named after Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx, numerous parks, statues of Alexander Pushkin and a lapdance establishment that delegates have been advised to steer clear of. In spite of being on the Chinese border the locals’ faces are European. And there is only one Chinese restaurant. “It’s an imperial outpost,” said one western diplomat. “It’s a little piece of Europe, stuck in the middle of Asia.” The summit itself is to be held in Khabarovsk’s Musical Comedy Theatre, just off the main drag of Karl Marx Prospekt. One of the main issues is Russia’s unhappiness with the European energy charter, a document that it has signed but not ratified, and deals with the all-important issue of access to energy pipelines. Russia would like Europe to adopt its own version of the treaty, which one EU diplomat said “ain’t gonna happen”. But the question of pipelines has focused the EU’s attention ever since January, when a row between Russia and Ukraine over gas supplies briefly cut off gas to many European countries. The real work is scheduled for Friday. Thursday was dedicated to the ritual of name badges and the ubiquitous plastic conference briefcase full of commemorative note pads and pens, networking and a fireworks display. It was unclear how much of this hospitality registered with the EU delegates, whose heads had a pronounced tendency to loll if they were allowed to sit for too long. Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009 Report of comments made by Vladimir Chizhov, Russia's Ambassador to the EU previewing issues to be discussed at the 23rd EU-Russia Summit, Khabarovsk, 21-22 May 2009. |
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| Source Link | http://www.euractiv.com/en/priorities/eu-russia-summit-focus-hard-security/article-182320 |
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| Countries / Regions | Europe, Russia |
