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Romania's Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos on Wednesday told his Dutch counterpart Mark Rutte that the Romanian society is capable of undertaking the fight against corruption and securing justice independence "without being monitored from the outside."
"At this lunch, we had time today to go into details about the political situation in Romania, the economic stability that we have, the maturity of the Romanian society which is capable of undertaking, on its own, without being monitored from outside, certain responsibilities, including the fight against corruption and [securing] justice independence. The Romanian society has already proven this lately and this kind of arguments are also important in the position our European partners will take, including in terms of the kind of political decisions [the accession to the Schengen area]," Ciolos told a joint news conference with Rutte.
About the Netherlands' perception over Romania's progress with judiciary reform under the Co-operation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) and Schengen accession, Ciolos said the high level dialogue between the two countries is extremely important to give a chance to the Romanian authorities to better explain the realities of Romania. "I believe that this kind of high-level dialogue that has lacked for many years, on a prime minister level, is important because it allows us to explain what the realities in Romania are. Many times, decisions in Brussels or in some member states are based on assessments that are more superficial and that are not always based on a deep knowledge of realities," Ciolos said.
In his turn, Prime Minister Rutte showed that in its CVM report of January, the European Commission found that important steps had been taken for justice reform and the fight against corruption.
