On August 27 in Brussels, deputies from the party For Human Rights in United Latvia and the president of the European Russian Alliance of Russian, Tatiana Zhdanok, held an extraordinary meeting of the European Russian Forum’s organizing committee. The meeting was attended by Konstantin Makarenko, administrative secretary of the forum, and Archpriest Antony Ilin, executive secretary of the Forum and European representative of the Russkiy Mir Foundation. The committee approved the topic for the Second European Russian Forum – The European Union and Russia: New Challenges. The forum will take place at the European Parliament on December 8, 2008. The event will be divided into two sections: “Russia and Russians in the European Media” and “National Self-Determination.”
As noted by Tatiana Zhdanok, the themes were not randomly selected, as recent events in the Caucasus and the geopolitical motivation of individual political players have revealed not only “communication difficulties” in the dialogue between the EU and Russia, but also a blatant misinforming of society and the collapse of the fundamental values within the European Union, every second member of which has “its own latent Abkhazia and South Ossetia.”
The European Russian Forum, which convenes at the initiative of the European Russian Alliance, is a unique platform for advancing the humanitarian dimension of nongovernmental dialogue between the European Union and Russia. The first forum, which was held on October 1, 2007, was devoted to the Russian-speaking community in Europe and its role in the EU-Russia relations. The forum brought together Russian compatriots, political experts, human rights activists and representatives from traditional religions and civil society in Russia and the EU. A number of events took place, in particular, Europe’s first roundtable discussion on the interaction of new ethnic diasporas in the European Union (Luxembourg, May 16, 2007). The forum is being held with the support from the Russkiy Mir Foundation, the European Free Alliance of the European Parliament, the Government Commission on Relations with Compatriots Abroad (Russia), the Moscow city government and the European League of Human Rights Organizations.
