The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, stated that in August of this year the consulates general in London and Paris are to become operational, as part of the consular reform launched starting in 2020. Also, by the end of the year, they will also be opened the consulate general in Nantes, the consular office in Belfast and the consulate general in Salzburg, the minister announced.
The Romanian FM revealed in the government sitting on Wednesday, a plan of measures aimed at improving consular services. “We emphasized the resizing and modernization of Romania’s consular network and measures were taken to establish new career consular offices in Chisinau, Madrid, Rome, London, Paris, Salzburg, Belfast, Nantes, Valencia and Ismail. This year, the general consulates in Chisinau, Madrid and Rome were operationalized. Already, last year, the consulate in Melbourne was also operationalized, and in the next period, namely in August, the consulate general in London and the one in Paris will be operational. Also, in the second part of the year, the consulates general in Nantes, the consular office in Belfast, respectively the consulate general in Salzburg, until the end of the year”, stated Bogdan Aurescu.
He also referred to an increase in the activity carried out by mobile, itinerant consulates.”We have taken measures to better organize those mobile, itinerant consulates. This year, we provided in our action plan 161 such missions, 187 have already been carried out, which have already provided 21,502 consular services. Because the main problems relate to the granting of work visas, as we well know, a traveling consular mission was organized in Bangladesh, in Dhaka, between April and July, which has already managed to grant more than 5,400 work visas. And we are preparing a similar mission in Nepal, because Bangladesh, Nepal, India are the most important sources of foreign labor”, Aurescu also said.