On 9 July, as this year’s sixth Three Seas Summit and Business Forum hosted by the Republic of Bulgaria in Sofia came to an end, the official 3SI flag was handed over to President of Latvia Egils Levits. Hand-over ceremony symbolically marks the start of Latvia’s commitment to host the seventh 2022 Summit in Riga.
During the press conference, President Levits warmly thanked his Bulgarian counterpart for an excellent summit: ‘Sofia Summit offered a good diversity of exciting and inspiring discussions between 12 participating countries and our strategic partners from the United State of America, Germany and European Commission. Ambitious long-term development perspectives, better future and hands-on approach were the main topics of this year’s discussion. Hosting such a huge event will be quite a challenge for us, but we have been carefully watching how Bulgarian side copes during this summit and this experience will definitely come in handy when you come to Riga next year’.
President of Bulgaria use the press conference to hand over the official 3SI flag to President of Latvia. He wished Latvia lots of energy and determination in making the next, seventh Three Seas Summit and Business Forum in Riga a success.
Summit restarted earlier today with a presidential discussion on the geopolitical scope and impact of the Three Seas Initiative. President of Latvia highlighted the unity within Europe and equality between all member states. He urged to put more effort into promoting European values, greater public involvement and common European development goals. He also stressed the need to make the Three Seas Initiative more visible and strengthen the 3SI Investment Fund.
FOTO.
Background
The aim of the Three Seas Summit and Business Forum is to promote direct cooperation for implementation of flagship 3SI transport, energy and digital projects.
Three Seas Initiative was founded on 25 August 2016 during the first Three Seas Summit in Croatia by 12 European Union member states: Latvia, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. United States of America, Germany and European Commission have joined the initiative as partner countries. There have already been five such summits: in Croatia, Poland, Romania, Slovenia and Estonia. The sixth, this year’s summit of the leaders is hosted by Bulgaria.