The Romanian – French Relations
The French President Francois Hollande will pay a formal visit to Romania this year.
Roxana Vasile, 21.01.2016, 13:48
The Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has recently extended an invitation to the President of France, Francois Hollande, and the latter’s response came promptly: the French president will this year pay a visit to Romania, a country traditionally known as Francophone and Francophile.
The talks between the two officials, held at the Elysee Palace, were extremely cordial, also because the two officials have many things in common. Himself a proficient speaker of French, PM Ciolos is married to a French lady. Also, he went to university in France, a country that appreciates the Romanian PM for the way in which he managed the EC Agriculture Portfolio. Then, just like President Holland himself has stated, Romania and France, tied by a historic friendship, have joint objectives under a strategic partnership, the first Paris signed with an East-European country in 2008.
With his official visit this week, the PM Dacian Ciolos has laid new bricks on an already solid foundation, consisting mainly in a very tight political and economic cooperation, marked by the solid presence in Romania of large industrial groups operating in fields such as car manufacturing, aeronautics or public services. Such cooperation lays the perfect ground for boosting even further the relations between Romania and France.
As Romania is one of the European countries that have registered the highest economic growth rates lately, Prime Minister Ciolos has stated that the French SMEs have a big potential with regard to investment in the food or energy sectors in Romania. Also, the two countries have a good cooperation also at top level, such as the building near Bucharest of the first high power laser in Europe and the second largest in the world.
At European level, against the background of the migration crisis, Romania, responsible for one of the largest external borders of the EU, supports the projects aimed at tightening border control. Bucharest, the PM Ciolos has said, hopes that this contribution will be acknowledged, and, adding to the technical criteria that Romania has already met, will lead to this country’s joining the Schengen agreement, starting with the opening of air communications.
The neighborhood policy, especially in the east of Europe, was also on the agenda of PM Ciolos’s talks in Paris. He voiced hope that the attempts made by France and Germany to normalize the situation in Ukraine would bear fruit, benefiting the whole of the EU and rendering the situation in this part of Europe stable. Then, Bucharest counts on Paris’s support with regard to the Republic of Moldova’s European aspirations and the economic reforms and development in the region.
Also worth mentioning is the fact that in Paris PM Ciolos met with the speakers of the two chambers of the French Parliament, French business people and Romanians settled in the Hexagon.
