“Together with our colleagues from all Baltic Sea region countries, we will share experiences and discuss the ways of building a stronger link between education and the labor market. We will also try to pinpoint areas for closer regional cooperation,” said Janis Vucans, President of the BSPC and the Baltic Assembly (BA).
The link between education and employment is one of the priorities of Latvia’s presidency of the BSPC, Vucans said, expressing his delight with Riga hosting the conference at the time that marks the 25th anniversary of the Baltic Sea region’s parliamentary cooperation.
The BSPC began on Sunday with the meetings of the Drafting Committee and the Standing Committee. The official opening ceremony took place on Monday morning at the University of Latvia Academic Center of Natural Sciences.
The list of speakers and experts includes Valdis Dombrovskis, Vice-President of the European Commission; Poul Nielson, former EU Commissioner and Danish cabinet minister; Maja Gojkovic, President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (PABSEC) and Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia; Zanda Kalnina-Lukasevica, Parliamentary Secretary of the Latvian Foreign Ministry; and others.
The first session of the conference will focus on cooperation in the Baltic Sea region, and the second session will tackle the issue of bridging education and the labor market to boost the regional competitiveness. This session will address the ways of identifying labor market needs, trend forecasting models, vocational and adult education. Delegates will also exchange views on cooperation in higher education and implementation of work-based learning schemes.
In honor of the 25th anniversary of the BSPC, the ceremonial session “Baltic Sea parliamentary cooperation: yesterday, today, tomorrow” will take place on Monday.
The third session of the 25th BSCP on Tuesday will focus on realizing employment opportunities to improve labor mobility and combat youth unemployment. The session is aimed at discussing the impact of migration and urbanization on employment.
Concluding the conference, a final resolution will be adopted. The conference is the last BSPC event under the Latvian presidency, as this task will now be transferred to the Hamburg Parliament, Germany.
The Baltic Sea Parliamentary Conference (BSPC) was established in 1991 as a forum for political dialogue between parliamentarians from the Baltic Sea region: Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, Russia, and Sweden. The BSPC gathers parliamentarians from 11 national parliaments, 11 regional parliaments, and five parliamentary organizations around the Baltic Sea. The Latvian parliament, represented by its BA delegation, has been a participant since the establishment of the BSPC.
