Forty-Member Delegation From EU, Including Businessmen, To Visit Crimea This Week - Member

Forty-Member Delegation From EU, Including Businessmen, to Visit Crimea This Week - Member

A delegation from the European Union, comprising over 40 people and including representatives of the EU business community, will visit Crimea this week to study opportunities for cooperation, Andreas Maurer, the head of the German Die Linke party group of the Quakenbruck parliament, told Sputnik after arriving for the event.

MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 14th August, 2018) A delegation from the European Union, comprising over 40 people and including representatives of the EU business community, will visit Crimea this week to study opportunities for cooperation, Andreas Maurer, the head of the German Die Linke party group of the Quakenbruck parliament, told Sputnik after arriving for the event.

"According to my estimations, over 40 members of the delegation will visit Crimea this week ... including business and public diplomacy representatives from Germany, Switzerland , Austria. For example, I am here now with business representatives who have a very clear program, we literally meet with representatives of banks, politicians. They are looking for sites in Yalta where it would be possible to implement projects," Maurer said.

According to Maurer, representatives of the tourism business, engaged in different projects in Spain and Greece, are expected to arrive as well.

"They have already been present in Yevpatoria. We will discuss the opportunities for developing business in Crimea in high season and I see a very big interest in this," Maurer added.

The lawmaker added that he had, in particular, arrived in Crimea to support the Austria-German construction company THOMA that plans to build hotels in Yalta and other cities on the peninsula.

"My party, Die Linke, knows my personal position on Crimea and the Donbass region. I consider that the return of Crimea to Russia was not an annexation at all, but rather a form of reunion," Maurer stressed.

Crimea rejoined Russia in 2014 after 97 percent of the peninsula's residents voted in favor of the move in a referendum. The reunification was not recognized by Ukraine or Western countries, which subsequently imposed economic and political sanctions on Moscow. Russia has repeatedly stated that the referendum in Crimea was conducted in compliance with international law.

Despite the sanctions, a number of delegations from dozens of countries, including Germany, France and Italy, have visited Crimea.