MOSCOW, March 2. /TASS/. Russia’s State Duma attaches much importance to relations with Finland’s parliament, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin said at a meeting with Finnish parliament speaker Matti Vanhanen on Monday.
"We attach much importance to relations with our colleagues from Finland," Volodin pointed out, thanking Finnish lawmakers for supporting Russia’s delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). Vanhanen, in turn, emphasized that Russia’s participation in the Council’s activities was important.
"We need to reset relations between our parliaments, boosting them on more meaningful platforms," the State Duma speaker noted. According to him, "one of the future meetings between Russian and Finnish lawmakers needs to focus on environmental issues."
When speaking about dialogue between Russia and the European Union, Volodin said that "differences are inevitable." "We should be wise enough to overcome these differences, building relations in areas where we either don’t have differences or have only a few, and from that, we can boost relations based on the principles of non-interference in the affairs of sovereign countries, friendship and mutual respect," the State Duma chairman stressed.
"We believe that dialogue needs to be maintained at all times, even in the most difficult situations, we attach much importance to ties between lawmakers and efforts to make our meetings more effective," Volodin said.
He emphasized that dialogue was crucial for lawmakers. "We represent our people and if dialogue is interrupted, it is a negative signal making it clear that politicians have lost the ability to hold dialogue, which points to their lack of skill," he explained.