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Romania OKs visit by Russian official under EU travel ban
Romania's foreign ministry has defended a visit by a Russian legislator who is on a European Union sanctions list, saying restrictions do not apply for international meetings, AP reports.
State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin arrived in Romania on Friday for a meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation.
The foreign ministry said Romania was "obliged" to allow Naryshkin enter Romania because the EU travel ban establishes "that restrictions do not apply in the situation where a state member has obligations of international law, which comes from a multilateral accord which confers privileges and immunity."
Naryshkin spoke to the Romanian Senate later and lawmakers representing the ethnic Ukrainian community walked onto the Parliament floor where he was speaking to protest his presence.
During the official speech, the Ukrainian delegates displayed two banners reading "2008 - Georgia, 2014 - Ukraine. Who's next? PUTIN STOP!"and "Putin, return Crimea back to us!"
Sergey Naryshkin interrupted his speech in order to tell delegates who were protesting that "they would be more comfortable seated."
In his turn, Romanian Senate President Calin Popescu-Tariceanu called on the delegates engaged in protest to take a seat.
"I ask delegations that are taking a stand to take into consideration my request for the good conduct of works, to return to the seats assigned to them," Tariceanu stated.
The speech of the Russian official ended with an invitation addressed the protesters and asked them to attend the 47th plenary session of the Assembly, scheduled for June 28-30, 2016, in Moscow, to which the delegates answered with hootings.
Chairman of Russia's State Duma Sergey Naryshkin said here on Friday that a ban on his entering the European Union is a "barbarian's action".
Naryshkin has been included on a list of Russian personalities sanctioned by the European Union since the outbreak of the Ukrainian crisis. Finland denied issuing a visa for several senior Russian officials, among whom chairman of the lower house of the Russian Federation's Federal Assembly, who wished to take part in an OSCE meeting organised in Helsinki in early July.
"This action is like the action of a barbarian, because all those taken actions were against the democratic principles, against the principles of the human rights and against the principles existing in the European Union. These are attempts to politically punish a country that has made a choice. Those efforts to punish, as we can notice, are against the two million citizens of Crimea, who are subjected to those restrictions, as I am. You can imagine what the two million people in Crimea think of the EU, of democracy and its values", the Russian official stressed.
Naryshkin attended the meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Organisation (PABSEC) organised in Bucharest on Thursday and Friday. Russia took over the PABSEC chairmanship for the next six months.
The Romanian Senate held the chairmanship of PABSEC June-November 2015.
The Romanian Parliament is a founding member of the Assembly and previously held the chairmanship of this body on three occasions, December 1997 - June 1998; June-December 2003 and November 2008 - June 2009.
PABSEC was established in 1993, and it is currently composed of 76 parliamentarians representing 12 states from the Black Sea region: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, the Republic of Moldova, Romania, the Russian Federation, Serbia, Turkey and Ukraine.