20 years of Romanian-American Strategic Partnership

The Bucharest Senate has marked two decades since the signing of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the United States.

Mihai Pelin, 13.09.2017, 13:56

Established in 1880, Romania’s diplomatic ties with the United States were interrupted in 1941, resumed in 1946 and promoted at embassy level in 1964. In 1993 the US granted Romania the most-favored-nation status and the market economy status ten years later. The Strategic Partnership between the two countries was initiated on July 11, 1997, on the occasion of a visit that the then US president, Bill Clinton, paid to Bucharest.

Ever since, the Partnership has been an essential landmark of Romania’s foreign policy and an efficient instrument meant to support efforts in the field of politics, economy, defense and administration. The Romanian political class hailed the 20-year anniversary of the Strategic Partnership with the US, marked on Tuesday in the Romanian Senate.

The partnership confirms Romania’s vocation as a partner of the US in promoting a stabile security framework throughout the world, where freedom, the rule of law, representative democracy and a free market could develop, says the text of a Declaration adopted by the Romanian Senate on Tuesday and read out by Senate Speaker Calin Popescu Tariceanu.

Tariceanu also mentioned the contribution that the former Romanian heads of state, Emil Constantinescu and Traian Basescu, alongside other leaders, made for the signing and consolidation of the Strategic Partnership.

Calin Popescu Tariceanu: “Romania was in a gray area at the time, and the Strategic Partnership with the US pulled it out from that area, and put it back among the democratic and free nations. This paved the way for Romania reaching its second strategic goal, namely EU accession.”

Attending the event in the Senate, the former Romanian President Emil Constantinescu talked about the confidence that the US had in Romania at the time: “What did this partnership bring new for Romania, something that this country did not have before? It brought national security guarantees provided by the world’s biggest military power, whose credibility relies on defending its allies from any foreign aggression. What did we have and did we lose? We lost national solidarity after joining NATO and the EU, and it is very hard to understand how this was possible.”

Marking two decades of Strategic Partnership with the US is a politically correct and necessary gesture, the former Romanian President Traian Basescu said: “With the Strategic Partnership being an official document of the two states, it is invoked at every high level meeting, because this political decision takes precedence over all the other accords we have concluded with the US. The document is handed over from president to president, from administration to administration and from parliament to parliament.”