Sept 6, 2023. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
The office
of the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, announced during the Three Seas
Initiative (3SI) Summit in Bucharest, which started on Wednesday, that an agreement
will be signed to include Greece as the 13th participating country in this
group, while Ukraine and Moldova will obtain associate state status.
Following their joint discussions, President Duda, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania, President Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania, and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković of Croatia held a joint press conference.
“The
success of this summit is the accession of Greece to the Three Seas Initiative.
Greece has been admitted as a full-fledged European Union member to the Three
Seas Initiative, but the success is also the accession of Moldova and Ukraine
as associated partners - two countries on the path to EU membership,” said
President Duda during the press conference.
In his
view, “this Three Seas Summit is so important and, at the same time, so
extensive because the Three Seas Initiative has demonstrated its value,
especially recently. We have seen how crucial all the infrastructure projects
that we have already undertaken within the Three Seas Initiative, or those we
plan to implement, are, as well as those currently in progress,” Duda
explained.
The Polish
President stressed that “the need for supplies to Ukraine, and the export of
products from Ukraine - all to enable Ukraine to function as normally as
possible in an extremely challenging situation - have shown how important
infrastructural connections in Central Europe are and how vital cooperation
between our countries is.”
John Kerry,
the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, is also participating in this
year’s summit.
Before the
summit began, the office of the Romanian President announced that he would
emphasize the importance of the 3SI, given the “brutal and illegal aggression”
by Russia against Ukraine over the past year and a half. President Iohannis
believes that this initiative has become a “vital tool for strengthening
regional and European resilience.”
During the
summit, the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, met with Romanian Prime Minister
Marcel Ciolacu. Sandu expressed that Moldova, which shares a border with
Ukraine, is “ready to contribute to the connectivity and unity of Europe.”
Furthermore,
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the summit via a video link.
“President
Zelenskyy’s participation in this Summit is very important, because today
Ukraine becomes an associated country of the Three Seas Initiative, which will
allow it to get involved in all the instruments of the Initiative, and also to
access investments for strategic interconnection projects. Ukraine will also
get closer to the EU and will be able to prepare better for its reconstruction
and recovery,” said the head of the Romanian state, in the opening of the 3SI
Summit.
The two-day
summit includes leaders from 12 European Union countries situated between the
Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas, as well as representatives from partner
countries. Its aim is to enhance cooperation in the fields of transportation,
energy, and digital technology
The Three
Seas Initiative includes Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia,
Slovenia, Austria, Estonia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Source:
PAP,
agerpres.ro