Live: Three Seas Virtual Summit
Estonia will host the Virtual Summit of the Three Seas Initiative on Monday, with online participation by several Eastern and Central European heads of state, as well as German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. President of Poland Andrzei Duda and Bulgarian President Rumen Radev are attending the event in Estonia. ERR News broadcasts the event live.
President Kersti Kaljulaid said that the Three Seas Initiative will help close the investment gap for the region and allow us to market it together as Europe's fastest growing region.
The summit is comprised of two parts. A high-level summit between the heads of state or representatives of the 12 member countries that will be joined by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Vice President of the European Commission Margrethe Vestager. The working session will see participation from the heads of state of Estonia, Poland, Romania, Latvia, Hungary, Slovenia and Lithuania.
The second part of the event is an open web forum to discuss the Three Seas Initiative area's energy, transport and digital infrastructure funding and energy and transport sector digitization. The event will also see the launch of the 3SI Smart Connectivity vision that has been put together with leadership from the Estonian Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications and should come to serve as a standard for cross-border smart infrastructure projects planning.
The live broadcast will start with top politicians' discussion of the Three Seas Initiative and the region's future that will be moderated by Chief Foreign Affairs Commentator at the Financial Times, Gideon Rachman. The broadcast will continue with presentations and discussions of international projects' funding, with the third block dedicated to smart connectivity, with proposals for how to digitize energy and transport sector infrastructure to favor innovation and more effective use of infrastructure. Speakers include United States Secretary of Energy Dan Brouillette and several other ministers and business leaders.
The Three Seas Region comprises 12 Central and Eastern European EU countries: Austria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia – as well as Poland, Bulgaria and Estonia – and its accompanying Three Seas Initiative (3SI) is focused on closing the infrastructure investment gap – put by some sources at over €1 trillion – between the region and its relatively more well-heeled western European EU counterparts.
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Editor: Marcus Turovski