Minister-delegate for European Affairs, about Council of EU presidency: Website under cyber attacks

Minister-delegate for European Affairs Victor Negrescu on Tuesday stated that Romania is facing "possible threats" in the process of preparation for taking over the Presidency of the Council of the EU, and he even mentioned a cyber attack on the Website especially created for the preparations for taking over the Presidency of the European body, and also a series of fake news.

"There are opportunities that we talked about and we will continue to talk about and there are also very many challenges. Challenges concerning Romania, as a country, but especially challenges concerning the European Union. There are some elements that are often mentioned in public speeches, when we talk about Brexit, for instance, or the future of the European budget, the elections to the European Parliament or the debate on the EU future. And, obviously, we need to have a real approach regarding the manner in which Romania will carry out this mandate. Because this is not solely about what we need to achieve at national level, but also at European level and obviously - and I want to reiterated this on this occasion - that the profile of our mandate becomes extremely interesting and extremely important. And considering all these, we are certainly dealing with - and I say this very directly - possible threats, possible risks, which we must manage in an efficient and coherent manner. No later than a few days ago we told the mass media that including the Website dedicated to the preparations for Romania taking over the Presidency was the target of cyber attacks, which shouldn't happen normally, since we are only talking about a Website that does nothing else but hosts some presentations," he said at the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy.

Negrescu also mentioned a series of fake news, "possible attempts to discredit" [Romanian authorities - editor's note], coming from the European media or other parts of the globe.

"I was telling you on a different occasion about those fake news circulating, about those possible attempts to discredit [Romanian authorities - editor's note], which unfortunately exist, be it authored by the European media or coming from other parts of the globe, which means that we must be able to react very fast. We need to react very fast in order to block such erroneous information sometimes released in the public space. I cannot say that it's something organized, this cannot be the case, but definitely such threats exist sometimes," he said.

On the other hand, Negrescu stressed that there is no risk that Romania will not be able to exercise its mandate at the Presidency of the Council of the EU.

"We are intensely preparing for this process and there are no risks in my opinion - for such risks were in fact mentioned in the public space - that Romania won't be able to exercise this presidential mandate," said the Minister-delegate.

Victor Negrescu also said that Romania is "intensely" preparing to take over the Presidency of the Council of the EU and that our country is "on schedule" with all that this process means, both logistically and politically. He also specified that it's necessary to work together to ensure that Romania's mandate is a success and that efforts should be concentrated on constructive elements, on the role of a mediator.

"Basically, we must prove our ability to generate added value in the European decision-making process ... (...) We have relaunched the network of experts generically called Diplomat of the European Union, a diplomat specialized in European affairs that is. We are going to intensify our discussions with these persons representing the diplomatic bodies, in order to talk about our topical issues, about our objectives, and in order to be able to forward our priorities and our external action, especially our actions at European level," he explained.