Russia's plan to lay a gas pipeline to Germany across the floor of the Baltic Sea bypassing the Baltic countries and Poland is 30% more expensive than the ‘Amber Gas Pipeline’ project proposed by the Baltic countries and Poland, and significantly more dangerous.

Russia's plan to lay a gas pipeline to Germany across the floor of the Baltic Sea bypassing the Baltic countries and Poland is 30% more expensive than the ‘Amber Gas Pipeline’ project proposed by the Baltic countries and Poland, and significantly more dangerous.

4. Is alarmed at the fact that the ongoing discrimination against and exclusion of the Russian-speaking minorities in Estonia and the other Baltic countries and the lack of dialogue has led to deep mistrust and dangerous tensions between the majority and those Russian-speaking minorities; insists that the Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltic countries must be granted the minority rights commonly accepted in the European Union; calls on the Estonian Government to follow the recommendations contained in the Concluding Observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination of 19 October 2006 with a view to changing ...[+++] this unacceptable situation;

Today, everyone is in favour of the Baltic countries having their freedom, but when, in October 1987, in the French parliament, Mr Le Pen and the members of the group that he was chairing wanted to exclude the Baltic countries – the annexation of which we felt was illegal because it was achieved by violent means – from the scope of the treaties concluded with Russia, all the other political parties were against.

It has also been contended that many of the candidate countries - the Baltic States, Slovenia, Cyprus and Malta - are too small to justify their division into a number of territorial units at NUTS 2 level. In the other candidate countries, establishing territorial units of a size comparable to those which exist in the present Union has met with few problems.

Moreover, in order to increase the mobility of students and lecturers in the Baltic States, an agreement was signed in February 2000 between Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia on the recognition of higher education qualifications in the Baltic region.