RADR2021/Iohannis: Increasing Romania's role in EU and NATO, deepening partnership with the US, essential

President Klaus Iohannis said on Tuesday that the "golden triangle" of Romania's foreign policy, namely increasing the country's role in the European Union and NATO and deepening and developing its strategic partnership with the US, remains essential. "To Romania, what we called at a previous meeting of ours the 'golden triangle' of Romania's foreign policy remains essential: increasing our role in the European Union and NATO, and further developing and deepening the strategic partnership with the United States of America. At the same time, domestically, we need close inter-institutional co-operation, redoubled by co-operation between the state and society in order to strengthen Romania in the face of current and future risks and challenges. Our resilience, as a state and society, must also be strengthened by a deeper anchoring of all our citizens in the fundamental democratic, European and Euro-Atlantic values. And on that area of action, the Romanian diplomacy has a role to play: you must continue to be our interface that underlines and brings to the country the positive lessons learned that are beneficial to the modernisation of Romania," the chief of state told Romanian ambassadors and consuls in video remarks to the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy (RADR) 2021. He pointed out that Romania's National Strategy for the Defence of the Country, adopted in 2020, takes into account the new trends facing Romania in a pandemic context, with a major impact on security and international relationships. He appreciated the fact that a permanent exercise of strategic reflection is taking place at the level of Romanian diplomacy and the fact that this year the diplomacy meeting concentrates its debate on the concept of resilience. "Diplomacy plays a leading role in the efforts at national and European level to respond to the new international context and to be able to adjust continuously and with a vision to the challenges we face. We have to actually and solidly participate in the common action inside the European Union, inside NATO and with the partners with whom we share the same values and the same approach in order to defend the strategic interests that unite us and to reduce the dependence on partners with behaviours and objectives running contrary to them. That is why the Romanian diplomacy has to stay engaged, particularly in the ongoing reflection processes within NATO and the European Union, in terms of the comprehensive concept of resilience, to identify the most appropriate and effective responses to new challenges and changes," said Iohannis. He also commended the Romanian diplomats for their involvement with very good results in the 'battle' against the COVID-19 pandemic, to the direct benefit of the Romanian citizens. AGERPRES (RO - author: Florentina Peia, editor: Andreea Rotaru; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)