Brussels, 12/10/2000 (Agence Europe) - With the adoption of the report by German Christian Democrat Godelieve Quisthoudt-Rowohl, the European Parliament approved, last week, the conclusion of the scientific and technological cooperation agreement between the European Community and the Russian Federation. The agreement aims at stimulating cooperation at the level of research projects covered by the Community's framework programme in a certain number of areas: environment, biomedicine and health, agriculture, forestry and fisheries, industrial techniques, non-nuclear energy, transport, information society, and social sciences. The agreement was concluded for an initial period that expires on 31 December 2002. It is renewable by common accord between the parties for additional five-year periods.
As German Green member Elisabeth Schroedter recalled, the vote on this report had been postponed last spring by the plenary, which thus planned to protest against the war in Chechnya. Speaking of the persistence of human rights violations and of the attitude adopted, last week, by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, which decided to wait further progress before re-establishing the powers of the members of the Russian delegations within it (see Day in Politics, Tuesday's bulletin), Ms Schroedter called for further postponement of the vote. Ms Quisthoudt was opposed to such a decision, considering that Mr Putin has a policy of openness towards the West and that this should be answered by a message of opening from the European Union in order to confirm cooperation between Russia and the EU. The Parliament rejected the request for the vote to be deferred and approved the report.