EU-Russia Permanent Partnership Council - Joint press release

The EU was represented by Minister Jan-Erik Enestam for the Presidency, Commissioner Stavros Dimas for the European Commission and State Secretary Matthias Machnig for the in-coming Presidency.

The Russian Federation was represented by Mr Yuri Trutnev, Minister of Natural Resources, accompanied by senior directors representing various governmental institutions in Russia.

Commissioner Dimas and Minister Trutnev signed terms of reference for establishing a Dialogue on Environment to implement the objectives and priorities indicated in the Road map of the EU-Russia Common Economic Space. These include respect for the environment, commitment to mutual international environmental agreements, fostering sustainable development and integrating environmental issues into all sectoral policies.

The main items in the agenda of the meeting were the launch of the EU-Russia Dialogue on Environment, climate change, biodiversity and environment and economic development.
The Environment Dialogue will focus on the following priority areas of cooperation: convergence of environmental policies, climate change, water and marine issues, biodiversity and nature protection, environmental impact assessment, forestry law enforcement, governance and conservation, cleaner production and pollution prevention.

The EU and Russia emphasized the importance of climate change issues including Kyoto Protocol, Joint Implementation projects and post-2012 climate regime.

The EU and Russia agreed to reinforce their cooperation in the Biodiversity Convention, nature protection and combating illegal logging.

The PPC emphasized that environmental protection is an inseparable part of the increasing economic cooperation between EU and Russia, and underlined the importance of integrating environmental concerns in concrete economic projects.

The EU and Russia welcomed the first meeting of the PPC on environment as reflecting the importance of environment in EU-Russia relations as a whole.