The ambassador stressed that Sweden would like to see Russia continuing with its bid to join the WTO.

The EU will also work on energy security, fighting organized crime and the Eastern Partnership program, which seeks free trade agreements and relaxed visa rules between the 27 EU members and six of Russia’s former Soviet neighbors in exchange for political reforms in those countries, Bertelman said.

Improving the EU’s commitment to the Baltic Sea and tackling transnational challenges posed by environmental threats will constitute one of the priorities of the Swedish Presidency, the Government on Stockholm has said.

Not surprisingly, given that the Chairman of the AEB Executive Board, Reiner Hartmann, is the top EON executive in Russia, Bertelman was questioned about the Swedish delay in granting environmental approvals to the Nordstream underwater pipeline project to transport natural gas from the arctic to Germany. Eon is one of the shareholders in the project.

Bertelman, displaying his dry humour, assured his audience that there was no politics involved, only the procedures involved in obtaining environmental approvals inside Sweden. “You should not be surprised, it took us 200 years to approve the bridge from Denmark to Sweden,” he quipped.

In the autumn it is expected that the last states to ratify the Treaty of Lisbon will have done so and the measures will go into effect, reshaping the EU’s institutions and powers with an elected president.

The EU’s outgoing envoy to Russia, Marc Franco stressed that the Treaty of Lisbon only affected the way the EU functioned and did not alter the essential fundamentals of the Union. “My successor will probably have to change the name plate on the front of the EU delegation building,” he said and there will be probably only one EU-Russian summit a year instead of the present two.”

At the end of the meeting Hartmann bade farewell on behalf of the AEB to Mr. Franco and also surprised the audience that one of the longserving founders of the AEB, Britain’s Geoffrey Cox was also leaving Russia.

Given the floor, Mr. Cox told the audience that neither his age, despite the upcoming celebration of his 77th birthday nor his health, despite having to walk with wrist crutches as a result of breaking his legs while parachuting in an earlier existence with the French special forces were forcing him out of Russia. “It is the crisis,” he said. “The fact is my company (Astera) can no longer afford to fund a chairman.”

Mr. Cox held out the prospect of returning on at least visits to Russia as he has accepted a position as senior consultant to Northstar Corporate Finance in Moscow.