The meeting was attended by Bratislav Djordjevic, representative of the Republic of Serbia to the International Secretariat of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, and Aleksandar Tasic, Chief of the Sector for Economic Multilateral Cooperation at the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At the joint meeting of the BSEC Committee of Senior Officials and the PABSEC Standing Committee the officials exchanged views on possible measures that should be undertaken to implement the Joint Action Plan for the improvement of cooperation between BSEC and PABSEC in the period 2016 - 2018. On the occasion, the Serbian delegation drew attention to the excellent cooperation between the PABSEC member states on a wide variety of issues and inter-relations stressing that “mutual respect and work on principles guaranteeing the achievement of the interests of each of the member states via the general interest of the region is an important quality of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation, not only in abstract terms, but in concrete situations, which makes us stronger and our cooperation more meaningful”. The National Assemblydelegation said that they are committed to the optimisation of the BSEC and PABSEC’s work where the focus would not lie on the number of meetings and published documents, but on actual projects and solutions which could be implemented in practice relatively quickly and easily and give visible results in due time thus leading to even better solutions in areas where the member states are not in agreement. At the meeting, PABSEC Secretary General Asaf Hajiyev informed the parliamentarians and representatives of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation present on the proposed amendments and modifications to the BSEC Charter concerning the Declaration on the strengthening of the status of the PABSEC. He stressed that strengthening the status of the PABSEC, its establishment as an international parliamentary organisation is to a great extent conditioned by the new international situation and political significance of the Black Sea region and the need to fully utilise the PABSEC’s potentials. The Declaration has been signed by eleven of the twelve PABSEC member states and the PABSEC Secretariat has prepared a draft Statute of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.

In the second part of the meeting, the meeting of the Working Groupon the PABSEC Rules of Procedure, the participants discussed the amendments to the PABSEC Rules of Procedure, and amendments to the PABSEC International Secretariat’s Rules of Service submitted by the national delegations of Russia, Azerbaijan, Serbia and Armenia. The meeting was attended by delegations of Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Moldova, Russia, Romania, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine.