Following the meeting, Ms Moret and the Swiss delegation made a
statement to the press, voicing their support for Ms Tikhanovskaïa and calling for human rights to be respected in Belarus, for dialogue with the opposition and for transparent elections.
This is the first official visit by a president of one of the two chambers of the Swiss Federal Assembly to the three Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – since their independence in the early 1990s. Ms Moret’s long-awaited visit, which took place from 18 to 24 October 2020, allowed her to take stock of the economic potential of the Baltic countries and the technological progress they have made in the last 20 years. She was accompanied by a multi-party delegation from the National Council.
Ms Moret was welcomed to Lithuania by the Lithuanian president and the minister of foreign affairs, with whom she discussed the situation in Belarus. They also talked about the difficulties Switzerland is encountering with respect to the EU framework agreement and how it is trying to resolve them. She further met with the country’s head of COVID-19 management. With the country about to launch a contact tracing app, the Swiss delegation shared their experience with the SwissCovid app, explaining that data protection legislation passed by Parliament had increased people’s confidence in using the app, which had been downloaded by 20% of the population.
In Latvia, the Swiss delegation was welcomed by the president of the Latvian parliament. Here it was able to observe how a digital parliament works. The Latvian parliament, including its plenary sessions and committees, has met in a fully digitalised format since 28 May. MPs can log onto sessions from any computer with an internet connection, using an electronic signature as a secure authentication method. The delegation also held talks with the Latvian president, the minister of foreign affairs and the minister of health.
The official visit ended in Estonia (22 to 23 October), where Ms Moret and the Swiss delegation met with the president of the Estonian parliament and members of various parliamentary committees, including the committee on European affairs. The programme included a presentation on the country’s centralised system for storing patient data (e-health): every patient in Estonia has a digital file that can be shared and accessed across different healthcare settings.
The agenda also included a visit to the e-Estonia Briefing Centre, which the delegation found very informative. Estonia has been investing in digital solutions for more than 20 years and is the only country in the world where 99% of public services are available online. In addition, more than 30% of the population uses e-voting, which enables citizens to vote from abroad. The delegation further visited the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence in Tallinn, where it gained an overview of Estonia’s cyber security capabilities. Switzerland has been a contributing partner of the Centre since 29 September.
The visit provided an opportunity to enhance the bilateral dialogue with the three EU member states and to discuss the next steps regarding the institutional agreement. The delegation also paid a visit to a project that was financed by Switzerland as part of its first contribution to EU enlargement, from 2007 to 2017, to clean up pollution in the Latvian port of Riga.
Ms Moret was accompanied on her trip by the following parliamentary delegation: Andreas Aebi (SVP, BE), Irène Kälin (The Greens, AG), Melanie Mettler (glp, BE), Roger Nordmann (SP, VD), Benjamin Roduit (CVP, VS) and Beat Walti (FDP, ZH).