Europees Parlement vermijdt gebruik perszaal "Anna Politkovskaya" voor Russisch-gerelateerde evenementen (en)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - European Parliament officials have quashed suggestions they avoid holding Russia press conferences in the "Anna Politkovskaya" press room for political reasons.
The parliament's main press room in Brussels was in January 2008 named after the slain anti-Kremlin journalist as a symbol of support for free speech and human rights.
Since that time, none of the three Russian press events held in parliament have used the well-equipped chamber, which has places for TV cameras and interpreters.
An EU-Russia Parliamentary Co-operation Committee (PCC) event in March 2008 saw delegates from the Russian Duma talk to press in an obscure meeting room instead.
When Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller met parliament president Hans-Gert Poettering i in January 2009, the press conference took place in a cramped corridor, despite intense media interest.
The latest PCC - held last week in Brussels at the same time as a trial in Moscow of two Politkovskaya murder suspects - also handled journalists in a side room, called "A1G1."
The decision provoked whispers among EU officials that parliament powers are pandering to Russian sensitivities, with Italian liberal MEP Marco Cappato i officially posing the question.
"I'll be interested in knowing the reason why the press conference has been scheduled in a different venue," he wrote in a letter to Mr Poettering and the PCC chair, Dutch conservative MEP Ria Oomen-Ruijten i.
"I fully understand your concerns but I believe the participants on behalf of the EP [EU parliament] delegation to the EU-Russia PCC are quite able to raise the points you make [on free speech]," Ms Oomen-Ruijten replied.
The Russian embassy to the EU declined to comment on the suitability of the "Anna Politkovskaya" name, saying the ambassador never goes to meetings in the parliament.
But one parliament official explained that the venue decision is made for purely practical reasons, with the Russians too politically canny to avoid the Politkovskaya room in any case.
"The Miller-Poettering event was arranged at the last minute. With the PCC, there's not much press interest, so it might be embarrassing to do it in the big chamber and you might lose members [MEPs] on the way across the building," he said.
"If we asked the Russians [to convene in the Anna Politkovskaya room] I am sure they would agree and they would say that the EU and Russia hold shared values on freedom of the press."