A former European commissioner for
\nagriculture, Dacian Ciolos will return to Brussels next week as Romania’s prime
\nminister in a technocratic cabinet. On Tuesday, the joint parliamentary
\ncommittees for European affairs approved Ciolos’ agenda for the upcoming
\nmeeting of the European Council on the 17th and 18th of
\nDecember. <\/p>\n
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The proposal for Romania to be
\nrepresented at this meeting by its prime minister came from president Klaus
\nIohannis, and experts have all welcomed the idea because, on the one hand,
\nCiolos is at ease in Brussels, and on the other, because this would send a good
\nsignal about the mutual trust between the president and the prime minister. In
\nthe past, both Iohannis and his predecessor Traian Basescu did not hide their
\nmisgivings about delegating the former Social Democrat prime minister Victor
\nPonta to represent Romania in Brussels. We recall that Ponta resigned last
\nmonth following massive anti-corruption demonstrations. <\/p>\n
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Ciolos said it was important to have
\na meeting with the parliamentary committees for European affairs because one of
\nhis cabinet’s priorities is to prepare Romania’s agenda in the run-up to its
\ntaking over the EU rotating presidency in 2019. At next week’s summit, Ciolos
\nsaid Romania would insist on the need to solve the fundamental issues
\nunderlying migration and to secure Europe’s borders more efficiently. Dacian
\nCiolos:<\/p>\n
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The central element of my agenda is
\nthat Romania will insist on the need to address the root causes of migration
\nand to achieve a better security of the European Union’s borders, while also
\ncontrolling migration at its source.<\/p>\n
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The prime minister also said Romania
\nwould maintain its reservations about the introduction of a permanent mechanism
\nfor the redistribution of refugees coming to the European Union from Africa and
\nthe Middle East. In September, the former prime minister Victor Ponta said
\nRomania could not take in more refugees than it could accommodate. He said
\nRomania could only provide accommodation for 1,500 people, but 150-200 of these
\nplaces had already been occupied. Amid speculations in the foreign media at the
\ntime about Romania receiving 4,000-7,000 immigrants, president Iohannis said
\nthat each EU member state had a right to take in only as many refugees as it can
\naccommodate. The figure he mentioned, namely 1,785, was close to that proposed
\nby Victor Ponta. Iohannis stood for what he called voluntary quotas and
\nrejected the idea of mandatory quotas proposed by EU officials. Later, Romania
\nappeared to agree to the principle of mandatory quotas, but commentators say
\nthat after last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris, in which so-called refugees
\nwere also involved, the entire issue of migration needs to be reconsidered. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The migration crisis is high on the Romanian prime ministers agenda for next weeks European Council.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":105,"featured_media":66249,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[37738],"tags":[29483,28997,29207],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-66464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-today-in-the-news","tag-dacian-ciolos","tag-european-council","tag-migration"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n