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Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu met with his Swiss counterpart, Ignazio Cassis, on Monday, a context in which he stated that both sides intend to develop economic and sectoral cooperation, but also to capitalize on cooperation in the field of dual vocational training.
"In exercising its mandate as President of the EU Council, Romania aims to ensure an effective presidency by assuming the role of an impartial mediator and facilitator in finding consensus for fulfilling the attributions related to presiding the Council, including with a special emphasis on the areas of interest related to the relationship between the EU and the Swiss Confederation. We are interested in finalizing the negotiations on the conclusion of a framework agreement between the EU and Switzerland that would also provide a better basis for the development of our bilateral relations," Melescanu said.
He expressed his appreciation for Switzerland's contribution to reducing social and economic disparities, contributing to the financing of areas such as security, stability, support for reforms, border security, local and regional management capacity, modernization of the judicial system, environmental and infrastructure issues, promotion of the private sector, SME financing, social development of human resources.
The discussions also focused on the economic field, Melescanu mentioning that the trade has grown up to 857 million euro, Switzerland being the 8th investor in the Romanian economy.
Melescanu also said that Romania and Switzerland have similar or close opinions regarding the neighborhood and regional interest topics.
He mentioned that Romania is firmly in favor of EU enlargement, arguing that the enlargement of the Western Balkans and the Eastern part of the country is a priority of the Romanian presidency of the EU Council and stressed the need for closer cooperation between Romania and Switzerland within international organizations.
In turn, Ignazio Cassis said that there are economic premises to further improve the cooperation between Switzerland and Romania. He announced the visit to Romania of a state secretary of the Economic Department, who will come to discuss on science, universities and academia.
The head of the Federal Foreign Affairs Department of the Swiss Confederation said that his country intends to make a second contribution to the EU by 2030.
In Switzerland, there has been an internal political debate to make one more contribution, the second contribution to the EU for the next period, by 2030. (...) We have largely taken stock of a positive cooperation, but we have found that we have the opportunity to improve it and would like to address these possibilities in the second contribution of Switzerland to the enlargement of the EU, in order to provide a help as concrete as possible for the next generations of Romanians to remain in Romania and to succeed in building a prosperous country. (...) We also tackled the topic of the emphases that we have to make in this endeavor, and the emphasis will be on our contribution to vocational training, because our idea is that well-trained young people can work for themselves and can build the strong state we need. We need strong states across the European continent. Europe is no longer the center of the universe, there are other powers that have emerged in the meantime, said Ignazio Cassis.
