The meeting was held on the sidelines of the 149th Inter-Parliamentary Union Assembly in Geneva.
Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council Konstantin Kosachev – head of the senatorial part of the Federal Assembly delegation to the 149th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union – held a meeting of the heads of the BRICS countries’ parliamentary delegations.
The meeting participants discussed the possibility of establishing BRICS Plus, a new geopolitical group, within the IPU.
According to Konstantin Kosachev, the establishment of the BRICS Plus group will enable member parliaments to exchange views on issues of mutual interest. “Each parliament will be able to freely express its own position based on national interests.”
The Russian side presented the participants with draft regulations of the group for their review and proposals.
The Federation Council Deputy Speaker reminded attendees about the upcoming BRICS summit to be held in Kazan on 22–24 October and thanked those who attended the meeting of the chairs of the committees on foreign affairs of BRICS parliaments in Moscow in April and the parliamentary forum in St Petersburg in July.
The meeting was attended by Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Agriculture and Food Policy and Environmental Management Alexander Dvoinykh, Deputy Chair of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs Andrey Klimov, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Petr Tolstoy, and Chairman of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs Leonid Slutsky.
Currently, all IPU member parliaments belong to one of six geopolitical groups, which are generally organised along geographical lines: the African, Arab, Asia-Pacific, Latin American and Caribbean, Twelve Plus (Western and Central Europe) and Eurasia groups.