On Monday and Tuesday, a conference of EU parliament heads will be held at the Prague Congress Centre. Photo credit: KB / Brno Daily.
Prague, April 23 (CTK) – The program for heads of parliament ahead of the two-day EU parliamentary conference began yesterday, as Czech parliamentary speaker Marketa Pekarova Adamova received the chairwomen of the European parliaments and Senate Chairman Milos Vystrcil received Lindsay Hoyle, Speaker of the British Parliament.
Pekarova Adamova (TOP 09) had dinner with the other parliament chairwomen at the Prague Crossroads. She told CTK that the meeting was also attended by Oleksandra Matviichuk, a Ukrainian lawyer and founder of the Center for Civil Liberties, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year.
Pekarova Adamova said the meeting was attended by 12 chairwomen of European parliaments as well as Switzerland and Montenegro. She told CTK that one of the topics discussed at the meeting was the greater participation of women in foreign and defence policy. She said that diplomacy of EU countries suffers from insufficient involvement of women, and said they had tried to share inspiration and answer related questions.
They also discussed refugees and the rape of women in relation to the war in Ukraine, she said, adding that they had many options how to bring up topics neglected by their male counterparts.
Vystrcil and Hoyle debated aid for Ukraine and its reconstruction, the future of Europe, the Indo-Pacific region and the upcoming NATO summit in Vilnius, the Senate wrote on Twitter.
After his meeting with Hoyle today, Senate Chairman Vystrcil (ODS) also received Ukrainian Supreme Council head Ruslan Stefanchuk, who presented him with Ukraine’s state decoration. The Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise was awarded to both Vystrcil and Pekarova Adamova by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for their outstanding personal merits in strengthening cooperation between Ukraine and the Czech Republic, support for state sovereignty and the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
Stefanchuk will bestow the decoration on Pekarova Adamova on Monday.
On Monday and Tuesday, a conference of EU parliament heads will be held at the Prague Congress Centre. Prior to that, Vystrcil and Pekarova Adamova will meet representatives of the EU candidate countries: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Moldova, Northern Macedonia, Serbia, Albania, Turkey and Ukraine.
Vystrcil told CTK that they would discuss how to make access as easy as possible. Before noon, a meeting of the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Spain and the European Parliament will be held.
The conference itself will begin in the afternoon. Vystrcil said 52 foreign delegations had been invited.
“The vast majority of them will come with their parliamentary heads, and in some cases, if the parliament has two houses, both heads of the houses will come,” Vystrcil added.
The topics of the conference will be Russian aggression against Ukraine and the response of the EU in the broader geopolitical context, the role of the EU in global cooperation between democratic countries and the issue of member states’ dependence on authoritarian regimes, Pekarova Adamova said.
“We will mainly discuss how to support Ukraine in order for it to succeed in defeating the Russian Federation,” Vystrcil said.
In addition, the heads of parliament will talk about the reconstruction of Ukraine and the country’s accession to the EU and NATO.
