“We are so glad to see you
in Moscow. We hold a face-to-face meeting, and now that is quite unusual, at least for European parliaments, as there are still lockdowns there. I hope that
all those problems caused by the pandemic will be over soon, and we will return
to the usual formats,” said Viacheslav Volodin
Vyacheslav Victorovich
The Chairman of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of the eighth convocation. Elected in single mandate constituency № 163 (Saratov constituency - Saratov Oblast)
to his Korean colleague.
Park Byeong-seug drew attention to the fact that the visit to Russia was the first personal visit of the Korean delegation. “After my inauguration, I have attached great importance to diplomatic cooperation with the four states neighboring the Korean Peninsula. And I decided to pay my first foreign visit to Russia,” he said.
Development of bilateral cooperation
Viacheslav Volodin stressed that the Presidents of Russia and the Republic of Korea had laid the foundations for development of cooperation. The Chairman of the State Duma added that those foundations would help to develop bilateral cooperation more effectively.
“We have transparent, trusting cooperation, it is based on the foundation that our presidents are constantly strengthening,” said Viacheslav Volodin.
“We should do everything within the framework of the parliamentary dimension to provide legislative support to develop our bilateral cooperation,” stressed the Chairman of the State Duma.
Fighting COVID-19
The Speaker of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea proposed to enhance economic cooperation between the two countries in the field of technology and production of COVID-19 vaccines.
Viacheslav Volodin commended the measures taken by the leadership of the Republic of Korea on such important issues as saving lives.
“When we speak about life and health issues, we need to develop such solutions that would be aimed at well-being of our citizens, while political competition and even someone’s desire to make money at the expense of health of our citizens would not be prioritized. As that is unacceptable,” said Viacheslav Volodin.
He is convinced that the Korean side supports enhancement of cooperation in that field, but also will create all the necessary conditions for production of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine.
“We discussed inter-parliamentary cooperation and we want to involve as many countries as possible in the discussions of such issues as health protection and countering COVID-19,” said the Chairman of the State Duma.
Further inter-parliamentary cooperation
The Speakers agreed to enhance inter-parliamentary cooperation at the level of specialized committees.
They also agreed that all the issues raised at the meeting would be discussed in detail at the meeting of the High Level Inter-parliamentary Commission.
Park Byeong-seug invited his Russian colleagues to visit the Republic of Korea in the autumn and to hold the first meeting of the Inter-parliamentary Commission.
“Over the past few years, our colleagues from the Republic of Korea and members the State Duma have done a lot developing cooperation at the level of parliaments, and we should continue it, we should do everything to ensure that our next meetings to be extensive and productive,” said Viacheslav Volodin.
He added that such issues as creation of new technologies and development of solutions to counter COVID-19 would be the priority issues of the next meeting.
“Of course, we hope that we could do a lot together to overcome the pandemic in the shortest possible time and soon we would be able to start solving tasks set by our presidents,” said the Chairman of the State Duma and recalled the goal to increase trade between Russia and the Republic of Korea up to $ 30 billion.
