Kaliningrad Region's Deputy Governor: TACIS Programme Is Obsolete - 12 September, 2002

Yesterday, Mikhail Tsikel, the First Deputy Governor of the Kaliningrad Region, said to the members of the delegation of the diplomatic missions of the member states of the European Union in Moscow, which had arrived in Kaliningrad, that the TACIS program was obsolete and needed fundamental revisions.

During a meeting with members of the regional administration, Vincent Picket, a senior advisor of the Moscow office of the European Commission, noted that the European Union had allocated, under the TACIS programme, EUR 40 million for the Kaliningrad Region over the past two years. In turn the Deputy Governor said that the region benefited little from the programme. He expressed his opinion that today the Russian enclave needed programmes of the same type as PHARE, the programme that already successfully worked in Poland and Lithuania. This programme could be useful to provide financing for the construction of a highway between Kaliningrad and Elblong, border crossings between the region and Poland and Lithuania, which are equally important for both Kaliningrad and the European Union. Mr. Tsikel appealed to the diplomats to begin to see the potential of the region, visa problems blocking everyone's vision at this time.

From Kaliningrad, the diplomatic delegation will go to Vilnius.