This will be the 13th Barents Euro Arctic Council (BEAC) meeting, where Sweden’s Foreign Minister Carl Bildt will hand over the chairmanship of BEAC to Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre.
Kiruna is Sweden’s northernmost city and the centre of LKAB’s iron-ore mining.
The Ministerial Session will take place on October 13th and 14th. The Barents cooperation is based on two levels, the intergovernmental and the interregional. It is expected that the Barents Regional Council will have their meeting on October 13th.
It is Troms County that chairs the Regional Council and will hand over the chair to Norrbotten region at next year’s Kiruna meeting.
Read all BarentsObserver articles from the 2009 BEAC Ministerial meeting in Murmansk.
The hall where the Ministerial meeting could be located is at the LKAB InfoMine in Kiruna, an impressive and top-modern visitor centre 540 meters below surface. Visitors will enter the centre by bus.
A final decision on the location of the Ministerial meeting will be taken when it is clear if the meeting room can take all needed facilities for simultaneous translations and other means for the Ministers and delegates.
The InfoMine Kiruna is located about the present iron-ore production level, which is between 775 meters and 1045 meters below surface.
As BarentsObserver reported last month, the mining industry in the Barents Region is booming and multi-billion investment plans exists for all four member countries.
In its chairman period, Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is highlighting economical cooperation and environmental issues.
