On December 18 the Foreign Ministry of Pridnestrovie hosted a meeting of the Public Expert Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PMR. Leaders and members of public associations of the republic, academic and artistic circles, as well as public authorities of the PMR were invited to participate in the event. The meeting of the Council was attended by Deputy Chairperson of the Government of the PMR for International Cooperation, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR Nina Shtanski.
During the event the members of the Council were presented the renewed Provision on the Public Expert Council, developed in accordance with the PMR’s Government Decree “On approval of the Standard Provision “On the Advisory Council under the executive authority of the Pridnestrovian Moldovan Republic”, adopted in May this year. Also within the meeting the participants of the Public Expert Council formed the management personnel of the organization.
At the meeting of the Council the participants paid special attention at summing up the year’s results in regards to the foreign policy. According to Nina Shtanski, the approved changes in the format of the Council functioning should significantly intensify the joint work on solving the existing problems on the external outline.
“Today's meeting was largely devoted to summarizing the foreign policy results. The foreign policy year was very difficult, but in certain areas it was literally a “breakthrough” in terms of performance, for example, in cooperation with the Russian Federation. We have talked not only about the successes, but also about new challenges, which, unfortunately, have increased in number at the end of the year. Today, the Council has set new goals, its composition has been renewed, thereby the organization has included more journalists and independent experts. Along with this, representatives of other government agencies participate in the work of the Council, and next year we all will proceed with solving problems. The Public Expert Council is a convenient format to generate ideas, because community workers and experts have much less “red lines”, which the official representatives have”, - said the Minister in the course of communication with the media after the meeting.
The participants of the Council also were presented a new website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with the development of which all the shortcomings of the previous site of the Foreign Ministry were eliminated, in particular, complicated site navigation, lack of a unified design of the main page and the difficulty in information searching.
As noted by Nina Shtanski, creation of the MFA’s new official page in the Internet has become particularly relevant in the context of the continuous rise of the site traffic (Note: compared with 2012 the rise of the traffic was 101% and with 2013 - 65%)
“I am glad that we managed to carry out this work, because every month thousands of people from different parts of the world visit our site. These visitors are not only from Pridnestrovie, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine, but also from far abroad, including those who find our page through search engines. Thus, our site is a kind of “foreign policy face” of the republic, “virtual embassy”, and that is why we tried to make this face modern and to make it fully meet the actual needs of Internet users”, - she said.
Within the PEC meeting also an enlarged edition of the activity book of the PMR’s MFA called “The blockade of Pridnestrovie: survival instead of development. All the way between two fires” was presented. According to the Adviser of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmitry Palamarchuk, one of the co-authors of the edition, the goal of the “activity book” was to form a reasoned argumentation, the evidence base of the existence of specific constraints and specific losses in foreign economic activity of the republic, the first print run was sold out in mere few months. Besides, since the publication of the first “activity book” new restrictions of the foreign economic activity added to the existing problems from Moldova and Ukraine, in particular, the problem of non-issuance by the representatives of the RM of phytosanitary certificates to Pridnestrovian farmers.
For reference: Public Expert Council under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PMR was established in accordance with the Order of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the PMR No. 34 Dated March 30, 2011. This Order approved the Provision on the Public Expert Council.
In accordance with the Provision, the Public Expert Council is a standing collegial advisory body created to establish effective cooperation of the MFA of the PMR with civil society institutions and individual experts to take into account public opinion in forming and implementing foreign policy of the state.
The main tasks of the Council are to improve cooperation between the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic with civil society and academic institutions , to use their potential to improve implementation of foreign policy of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic, as well as to raise public awareness on major activities of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PMR.
