Top-level meetings
Romania’s new president Nicuşor Dan has a busy foreign policy agenda.
Bogdan Matei, 11.06.2025, 14:00
Spain and Romania are firmly reiterating their strategic partnership, King Felipe VI of Spain said on Tuesday, when he visited, together with Romania’s president Nicuşor Dan, the Getica joint training centre in Cincu, and which also includes Spanish military, as part of the NATO battle group. This was the first visit by a foreign head of state to Romania since president Dan took office.
Referring to the battle group, the King said “the impact is visible with respect to security, training and creation of priceless professional links between the armies of the allied countries […] The connections built here will resist, I’m sure, throughout our military’s careers. It is a new way of building Europe”. He went on to say that “in times of so many changes and uncertainties, the international order is changing, but we, Spain and Romania, are firmly reiterating our strategic partnership, as it was first established in 2013, based on the strongest of links: that between our peoples”, located at the geographical extremities of the European Latin world. King Felipe also spoke about the “vast community of Romanians in Spain, more than half a million people, who are fully integrated into our society, taking part in everyday activities and contributing to our prosperity and helping to consolidate our cultural and socio-cultural links at the highest level”.
For his part, president Nicuşor Dan expressed his gratitude “for the constant support given to this community and the efforts of the Spanish authorities to ensure the due respect and support for the Romanian citizens”. He also hailed “Spain’s concrete and constant contribution to consolidating security on NATO’s eastern flank”. The presence of the Spanish military in Romania as part of the Alliance’s battle group, is clear proof of Madrid’s commitment to collective defence and to discouraging any form of threat to regional stability, the Romanian president also said.
From Cincu, he travelled to Chişinău to meet Moldova’s pro-western administration. In the second round of last month’s presidential elections in Romania, Nicuşor Dan won 88% of the 138,000 votes cast in the neighbouring Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova by Moldovans who also hold Romanian passports. During talks with his Moldovan counterpart Maia Sandu, Dan called for the consolidation of the relations between the two states in the fields of energy, infrastructure and education. He also reiterated his country’s support for the European integration of the Republic of Moldova. President Maia Sandu again spoke out against the threat posed by Russia’s hybrid war and its attempts to interfere in the domestic policy of Romania and Moldova.
