Radio România Internațional

Tag: Warsaw Summit

  • July 10, 2016

    July 10, 2016

    WARSAW – After taking part on Friday and Saturday in the NATO Summit in Warsaw, the President of Romania Klaus Iohannis had talks today with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda. The talks focused on measures to strengthen and extend the strategic partnership between Romania and Poland, as well as on the best ways to carry on the regional initiatives launched by the two countries. The two presidents also discussed the joint implementation of the decisions made in the NATO summit hosted by Poland, and the means to strengthen the trans-Atlantic cooperation between Romania, Poland and the USA, with an emphasis on security issues, as well as the effects of the Brexit vote, given that nearly one million Polish citizens and half a million Romanians currently live in the UK.



    GOVERNMENT – PM Dacian Cioloş will be on an Asian tour starting on Monday. The tour begins with an official visit to Vietnam, on July 11-14, followed by participation in the 11th Europe-Asia Meeting (ASEM), in Ulan Bator, Mongolia, on July 15 and 16. According to a news release issued by the Government, the visit to Vietnam is intended to restore the traditionally friendly relations between the two countries, with a focus on trade and economic cooperation. Apart from bilateral talks with the Vietnamese PM, President and other officials, PM Cioloş will attend the Romania-Vietnam Economic Forum in Hanoi, jointly with a delegation of over 20 representatives of the Romanian business community, to capitalise on the forthcoming EU-Vietnam free trade agreement. At the ASEM summit, PM Cioloş will present arguments for turning Romania into a key point for projects aimed at connecting Europe and Asia.



    SCHENGEN – The Romanian Foreign Minister Lazăr Comănescu said he hoped Romania to get closer to joining Schengen, after proving that it is able to protect the European Unions external borders. He added that, after its Schengen accession, Romania would contribute to strengthening the Unions capacity to secure its borders, and mentioned that Bucharest was the second largest contributor to FRONTEX, the agency that manages the security of the external borders of the European bloc. The Romanian official also reiterated that Romania fully complied with the technical criteria for accession. Originally scheduled for March 2011, Romanias accession to the border-free European area was repeatedly postponed, as some Member States voiced reserves with respect to the reform of the Romanian judiciary and the efficiency of its fight against corruption.



    VISAS – The Romanian PMs chief of staff, Dragoş Tudorache, will have talks on Monday in Brussels with the Canadian Immigration Minister John McCallum, and with European Commission officials. The talks will focus on Canadas waiving visa requirements for Romanians, a field in which, according to PM Dacian Ciolos, there has been progress. Ciolos said however that without a political decision in Ottawa on this topic, Romania, as an EU member state, might, just like Bulgaria, decide not to ratify the EU-Canada trade agreement. In April, Canada and the US were given three more months to come in line with the EU policy on mutual visa regimes, under which the countries whose citizens no dot need EU entry visas must in turn allow the free movement of all EU citizens on their territories. Canada currently requests entry visas for Romanians and Bulgarians, whereas the USA has visa requirements in place for five EU member states, including Romania.



    DIPLOMACY – The Romanian Foreign Ministry called on the British authorities to clarify the situation and to prevent hostile actions against the Romanians living in the UK, after a Romanian shop was recently set on fire in Norwich. Although this is an isolated incident, Bucharest intends to work with London to prevent the spiralling of anti-Romanian actions. All those who have information on similar incidents are urged to notify both the competent British authorities, and the Romanian embassy in London, reads a news release of the Romanian Foreign Ministry. Violence against immigrants was reported in London after the referendum in which the UK voted to leave the EU.



    EURO 2016 – Paris is hosting tonight the final of the 2016 European Football Championship, between France and Portugal. France, which also won the European championship of 1984, is the team that scored the largest number of goals in EURO 2016 (13). Portugal was also a finalist in the 2004 tournament. Romania was sent home from the competition as early as the group stage. After the failure in the European Championship, the Romanian Football Federation decided not to extend the contract with manager Anghel Iordanescu. Romanias new manager is the German coach Christoph Daum.

  • NATO and Romania

    NATO and Romania

    Consolidating NATO’s collective defense and reinforcing its eastern border also by ensuring a robust and credible presence of the Alliance in the region are two of the objectives of the Romanian diplomacy at the forthcoming summit in Warsaw, due on July 8 and 9. Bucharest believes in the strategic importance of the Black Sea for the Euro-Atlantic security and in boosting cooperation and coordination between NATO and the EU on the one hand, and NATO and its eastern partners on the other.



    In the run up to the Warsaw summit, a meeting of the NATO defense ministers has been scheduled in Brussels these days, to also be attended by Romania’s Defense Minister Mihnea Motoc. The debates will focus, among other things, on increasing the amounts earmarked for defense in each NATO member country. In 2014, NATO members decided not to cut those budgets, but to increase them so as to account for 2% of the GDP in the next ten years, given that defensive military capabilities are more expensive than the offensive ones. The news is good in this respect, as NATO estimates indicate an average of 1.5% of the GDP so far.



    Another important issue to be tackled in Brussels is getting NATO involved, through the AWACS aircraft, that is an airborne warning and control aircraft, in the fight against ISIS. Moreover, NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, told a press conference that, in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, the alliance would deploy four multinational battalions, on a rotational basis in the Baltic States and Poland, to boost those countries’ defence against Russia. According to Stoltenberg, NATO’s defence and deterrence force is not exclusively based on those four battalions. Seeing things in a broader perspective, those battalions are part of a more comprehensive change in NATO’s stand, in response to the challenges facing it.



    The message is clear — NATO is prepared to protect all its members, if necessary. Bucharest has received assurances in this respect from the United States too, through the voice of Ambassador Douglas Lute, the US Permanent Representative to NATO. The North Atlantic Alliance will stand by Romania in case of a concrete threat, Lute said in a teleconference referring to Russian President Putin’s recent statements. Moscow has not become more aggressive, but, in fact, it continues the irresponsible behaviour it started two years ago with the illegal annexation of Crimea, Douglas Lute also said. Bothered by the deployment of some elements of the anti-missile shield in Deveselu, southern Romania, Russia has an interesting rhetoric, but NATO will focus on facts, the American official went on to say.


    (Translated by Elena Enache)