The 10th Asia-Europe Parliamentary Partnership Meeting (ASEP10) will take place on 27-28 September 2018 in Brussels, Belgium.

Forward is a quote from European Parliamentary Vice-president, Ms Heidi HAUTALA, who is in charge of ASEP10.

"With the participation of all EU Member States and other non-EU countries, Russia Australia and New Zealand, ASEM and ASEP are a wonderful and unique forum of multi-lateral dialogue.

Asia and Europe are, to some extent and certainly in a strict geographic concept, part of a same area. Peoples' movements, cultural identities and origins, trades, political relations, have been shaping a common ground for centuries. The European-Asian dimension is not just a rhetoric formula.

EU and Asian countries share some challenges requiring a much deeper cooperation. No single issue such as fight against international crime, terrorism, radicalization, racism, climate change, protection of common environmental heritage, migration movements, fair trade mechanisms, technologic and scientific joint programs, and so on, can properly be addressed by just one side.

The EU/Asian partnership can be successful only if the citizens' concerns are fully taken into account in its agenda. This requires also further transparency in the working methods and operational conclusion of meetings and in a structural dialogue between the executive level and the parliamentary dimension.

While ASEM is developing an ambitious scheme of sectorial meetings, with an increased calendar of events, the parliamentary dimension needs to fully play its scrutiny role.

Hundreds of millions of poor people, particularly women and children, are extremely vulnerable to natural calamities, namely earthquakes, storms, tsunamis, and severe floods and droughts, which put development at risk. In this regard, it is the duty of the parliamentarians to emphasize the importance of ensuring disaster risk reduction, and disaster management is well integrated into development and poverty reduction strategies.

Natural disasters have widespread, cross-border impacts on human lives and the environment: neither a single country nor a region alone can address these challenges.

The world macro-economic environment has been undergoing unpredictable and difficult periods with new challenges, such as lack of confidence on, among others, financial market, constraint in recovery momentum, increased unemployment rate, which, in the end, would adversely affect the well-being of the people."