President of the Republic receives the President of the European Parliament

Ljubljana, 8.1.2008  |  press release

Dr Danilo Türk, President of the Republic, met today with Dr Hans-Gert Pöttering, President of the European Parliament. Their conversation focused, among other issues, on the activities of the European Parliament, the priorities of Slovenia’s Presidency of the EU Council and intercultural dialogue.

President Türk commented that the activities related to intercultural dialogue involve many contacts with important political and intellectual figures outside Europe. “Speaking of goals, one of our important strategic goals is to deepen and develop a new quality of understanding between European culture, already rather coherent, and non-European cultures, which is necessary in this time of globalisation when Europe is striving to achieve an appropriate position in the world as well as the appropriate dialogue of cultures in the global context,” stressed the President. The President of the European Parliament responded that intercultural dialogue takes place at different levels – European, national, regional and municipal. The European Parliament is especially involved in dialogue at the European level. “Of course, we promote dialogue at national, regional and municipal levels too," added Pöttering. He went on to explain that the European Parliament would organise numerous events as part of the Year of Intercultural Dialogue, such as Arab Week and Africa Week; they would also host important persons from political and religious life.

Dr Türk stressed that it was exactly the European Parliament that he saw as “the greatest and most interesting setting of European synergy. This is the meeting point of all political forces in Europe, revealing an additional new expression of European identity. If I speak of any project of the European Union, e.g. the Lisbon Strategy and seeking a balance between ecological and economic needs, it is clear that the European Parliament is the centre of synergy and that Slovenia will do anything in this framework to strengthen such synergy.”