MOSCOW, December 16 (Itar-Tass) ——A Russia-EU summit was held in Brussels on Thursday. Its main result was the adoption of a plan of the transition to a visa-free regime between Russia and EU. The recent Duma elections were also mentioned. The day before the European Parliament had adopted a resolution on Russia, which urged to hold repeated elections.
Deputies to the European Parliament even suggested that the violation of democratic principles during the Duma elections should be the main item on the agenda of the Brussels meeting, The Novye Izvestia writes. Some MPs urged to consider a possibility of not allowing the newly elected deputies to the Duma to attend meetings of PACE and bilateral commissions of the European Parliament. Medvedev did not mention the problem at a press conference. When European journalists asked him to comment on the situation, he answered in a rather tough way: “This is our business. I have nothing to comment, because those were our elections. The European Parliament has nothing to do with them. Actually, they may comment on anything they please. I shall not comment on their resolutions, because they mean nothing to me. The European Parliament should handle European problems. Just look, you have a lot of them.”
Participants in the summit did not mention the Russian elections for a long time, The Kommersant writes. Medvedev spoke in his opening speech about the problems facing the euro zone and the implementation of the third energy package. He was pleased that progress had been achieved in the liberalization of the visa regime, and that a document had been coordinated on practical steps to be taken for the transition to a visa-free regime between Russia and EU. In the first half of the summit the discussion was going on according to the agenda, the newspaper writes. The question was raised when Medvedev, President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso began to answer questions of journalists
Members of the Federation Council responded angrily to the scandalous resolution of the European Parliament, which stated that the Duma elections had not met international standards, and which supported the rallies against the forging of election, the Komsomolskaya Pravda writes. “The document is invalid from the legal point of view. It draws far-reaching conclusions on the basis of groundless assertions, which were not supported by any facts,” members of the Federation Council wrote in their statement.