The Head of the American diplomacy, secretary of state Antony Blinken might come to Romania in the second half of this year to mark 10th years of joint statement on the Strategic Partnership and the agreement on the missile shield in Deveselu. His Romanian counterpart, FM Bogdan Aurescu has already sent Blinken the invitation, after the two discussions they had last week.
“It is very important to have such meetings for it is a new administration in Washington and, even if both President Biden, secretary of state Blinken and other collaborators know Romania very well, still we need to set up our joint activity, our coordination and because this year it is important for the Romanian-US bilateral relation- we mark 10 years from the Joint Statement for the Strategic Partnership for the 21th century”, FM Aurescu told Digi24.
He revealed thnat Blinken’s visit will most probably happen in the second part of this year, for it is then the 10th anniversary is market (in September more precisely).
Aurescu and Blinken have talked about the importance of increasing the US military presence in Romania, but also about increasing the economic presence of the American investors in Romania. The US secretary of state praised the efforts Romania have made in the past years, particularly last year, to strengthen the rule of law, which the US officials considers as a framework inviting American investors and businessmen to Romania.
As for the Visa Waiver Programme, the Romanian FM mentioned there are no significant progress in this respect, unfortunately.
“We agreed to focus more in the upcoming period within the same working group destined to Visa Waver, (…) meaning to see exactly what are the causes that still determine the denial of certain visa requests for Romanian citizens. If we are able to identify as exactly as possible which are the reasons for these denials, we can calibrate the public information campaign that we intend to launch in the upcoming period, so that we can raise the awareness level among the Romanian citizens on the chances certain visa requests might have”, Aurescu explained.