Romania's Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu attends August 30 and 31 an informal meeting of the EU foreign ministers (Gymnich) in Prague as part of the events under the Czech Presidency of the Council of the European Union, where he mentioned getting rid of all dependence from Russia.
"First, it is important to continue to support Ukraine - (...),we have supported a lot the transit of Ukrainian grain through Romania. As of the 17th of August, more than 3.4 million tons of Ukrainian grain has passed through Romania, which is almost a half of the total of Ukrainian grain exports this period," the head of the Romanian diplomacy said before the start of the meeting., told Agerpres.
Aurescu spoke about creating a mission for assistance and training for Ukrainian armed forces, and also the need to continue to pressure Russia.
"We support fully the suspension of the Visa Facilitation Agreement, and at the same time, we will be open to take decisions, further decisions, in order to restrict the circulation of Russian citizens within the European Union, with accent on visas issued for tourism. But, of course, we need a solid legal basis, a solid legal ground for that, and we have to be very careful in order not to block the possibility of exposing the young generation in Russia to the European values, on one hand. On the other hand, it is important not to ban humanitarian visas, or medical visas, or visas to be granted to those persons who are opposing the regime or who are threatened by the regime in Russia," added Aurescu.
He added that because Romania is not yet a member of the Schengen space, it does not issue Schengen visas, so it issues bilateral visas to Russian citizens. "Since the beginning of the year we have issued a limited number of visas, only around 800, out of which only 130 were visas for tourism."
Aurescu also touched on the future of the EU-Russia relations, saying that things cannot return to "business as usual." It is, of course, early to assess what is going to be the future of the relationship between EU and Russia, because it depends on the evolution on the ground in Ukraine, but one thing is sure - we have to get rid of all dependence from Russia," he said.
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