IntMin Dan: 'In February 2019 we will organise in Bucharest an informal Justice and Home Affairs council'

The Minister remarked that her meeting with the European official takes place at a time when Romania is preparing to take over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union in the beginning of next year. 

"In what concerns home affairs, we are going to host no less than 19 meetings in Bucharest and in many other localities across the country, for which we are well prepared. For the first time, in February 2019, Romania will organise in Bucharest an informal justice and home affairs council, with all the ministers of interior and of justice from the European Union being expected to participate," stated Carmen Dan. 

She also said that all the security measures for this high level event have been "already planned." 

Dan added that she spoke with King about the milestones of the programme of the Romanian Presidency of the Council of the EU, which "will have the citizens at its core." 

"We intend to bring our contribution to shape the Union's answers to a wide range of issues, such as the internal security of the European Union, the functioning of the Schengen Area, the external borders management and all the current challenges," highlighted the minister of interior. 

She spoke about the challenges facing the cyber security field. "It is essential to have laws that will allow us to protect the citizens, especially the young ones and the children, against the danger of radicalization, which is a real danger that especially manifests itself in the online environment," pointed out Dan. 

The minister brought to mind that Julian King was a guest of the Romanian Interior Minister before, in September last year, when he visited the Romanian Border Police Command and Control Centre. 

"Back then he reiterated his support for Romania's accession to the Schengen Area, considering that our country met all the technical criteria," mentioned Carmen Dan. 

In his turn, the European Commissioner spoke about the challenges facing the European Union states - terrorism, cyber attacks, organised crime. 

"The Romanian presidency comes in a very important moment, in the context in which we are trying to solve all these problems." 

King referred to the "key points" in the field and, in this respect, he brought to mind a recent action of the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "Last month, President Juncker said that we must take concrete steps to counteract the online content related to terrorism that poisons the minds of the young and vulnerable in our countries," he explained. 

The European Commissioner mentioned that Juncker "also highlighted a few steps that need to be taken in order to ensure the elections - the national ones and also the ones to the European Parliament." 

"We've discussed about what can we do to obtain this result and strengthen the states' abilities to have safe elections," pointed out King. 

The European Commissioner also spoke about the steps taken in countering terrorist messages online. 

"I proposed that, for the first time, to have laws that will allow us to approach this problem of the terrorist content online. So far we've worked with the large social media platforms based on volunteers and we've made progress. However, there is too much such content on the Internet," said Julian King.

Agerpres