ForMin Melescanu says Romania successfully completed tenure as holder of EU Council presidency

Romania successfully completed last week its first tenure as holder of the six-month rotating presidency of the EU Council, and now it can breathe a sigh of relief, Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu said on Monday. He attended the opening of the official session of the Days of Trade Diplomacy, an event organised by the Ministry for the Business Environment, Trade and Entrepreneurship (MMACA), in partnership with the Bucharest School of Business (ASE) and the Centre for Foreign Trade Excellence. "One week ago, we completed Romania's first term of office at the helm of the Council of the European Union, and we breathed a sigh of relief," said Melescanu. He listed some of the economic files successfully closed under the Romanian presidency, including the modernisation of the World Trade Organisation; trade between Romania and the United States; the Black Sea Common Maritime Agenda, and the conclusion, signing or entry into force of free trade and investment agreements, including between the EU and Japan, Singapore and Vietnam. Melescanu congratulated the economic counsellors on the achievements. "At the Foreign Ministry (MAE), we want this existing good collaboration to continue to help us at a regional and global level in situations such as the conflicts in our neighbourhood, with directly materialised effects in terms of trade relations, I mean the imposition of economic sanctions and other countermeasures adopted by the member states. We continue our support in the future for the efforts of MMACA to bring numerically and qualitatively the network of economic counsellors as close as possible to the requirements of global developments to provide quality assistance to Romanian companies operating on external markets," added Melescanu. He told the economic counsellors in attendance that, besides promoting direct economic and commercial interests in the business environment, they should also be able to engage in other activities, such as assessing major economic trends and developments that can influence to a very large extent the activity of the companies abroad. "I would like to detail an aspect that could contribute to the development in line with the evolution of the Romanian business environment, which is increasingly more present on foreign markets: it would be necessary to monitor, promote and support Romanian investments abroad by a specialist department of MMACA. From the information we hold, the only organisation that has some sort of statistics of Romanian investment is the National Bank," Melescanu said. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Cernat, editor: Oana Tilica; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)