The Baltic and Nordic Foreign Ministries’ Directors for Asia meet in Riga

On 12–13 May 2019, Riga hosted a meeting of directors for Asia from the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of the Baltic and Nordic countries (NB8) chaired by the Director at the Second Bilateral Relations Department of the Latvian Foreign Ministry, Nils Jansons. The participants discussed domestic policy and foreign policy developments in Asia; they shared views on cooperation with the Asian countries and cooperation in multilateral formats, for instance, in the format of the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the European Union-the Association of Southeast Asian Nations  cooperation. 

The Foreign Ministry officials were unanimous that an exchange of opinions of this kind makes it possible to better coordinate cooperation with countries located far away, in which it is often impossible to establish diplomatic missions.

Directors for Asia from the Foreign Ministries of the Baltic States and Nordic countries (NB8) meet biannually in a Baltic or Nordic capital city. The next meeting is to take place in Helsinki, Finland, at the end of the year.