In a resolution adopted by the European Parliament, MEPs are in favour for a more ambitious trade and boosting the recently-agreed roadmap for visa-free travel between the EU and Russia in order to give a new impetus to negotiations for a new Partnership and Cooperation Agreement. However, only if Russia commits in protecting basic human rights, removing curbs on press freedom, pulling its troops out of Georgia and allowing gay parades.

The European Parliament intends to intensify the commercial relationships with Russia but also ask for garanties with regard to the protection of basic human rights, e.g. by ending politically-motivated court decisions against opposition leaders or removing the frequent restrictions on the freedom of opposition parties to register for the elections, such as the 2011 Duma elections.

On the energy issue, MEPs approved in the resolution that the supply of natural resources should not be used as a political tool. Therefore, they urge governments to look for a balanced trilateral EU-Russia-Ukraine solution on future gas flows to the EU. On the safety part, they request for a joint commitment at the EU-Russia summit to run ambitious stress-tests on nuclear power plants so as to avoid situations such as the nuclear melt-down crisis at the Fukushima plant in Japan.

The EU-Russia summit is taking place in Nizhny Novgorod (Russia) and MEPs hope the summit will help to overcome the remaining obstacles to Russia's joining the World Trade Organisation (WTO), including Russian's ban on all imports of EU vegetables.