President Nicusor Dan said on Thursday that he rules out a scenario of transatlantic rupture, adding that, in the case of Romania, there were small choices to be made in its foreign policy.
"There are small choices to be made, but, broadly speaking, I am ruling out this scenario of transatlantic rupture," he told Digi 24 private broadcaster.
The president added that Romania is "a middle power" worldwide.
"We, Romania, have a strategic security relationship with the United States and a predominantly economic relationship with the European Union and we want the transatlantic relationship to be as harmonious as possible. There were some shocks in the last year, there have been tensions, but they have not broken this relationship and what we are trying to do in the European debates, for example, on different formats, is to discourage the escalation of tensions."
He added that "in a world that is increasingly competitive, it is a very good thing what the European Union is doing, and in the internal debates we are of this opinion - to open a trade agreement with South America, to open a trade agreement with India, so that our economies are as competitive as possible."
Asked about a possible European army, he said: "Before we get there, we have to compensate for the security deficit. Where Donald Trump is right is that for decades Europe has relied on the security of the United States and that the economic price paid for that has been unbalanced between the United States and the European countries, and then what we have to do is - and fortunately what we have started to do and this war in Ukraine has boosted us, I'm talking about the European countries - it's time to start invest in defence, to try to reconcile the various military equipment that we have, but that is a process that takes years, during which, as [NATO Secretary General] Mark Rutte says, collaboration with the United States remains essential."
Dan announced that this year he will go to Washington.
"There is an invitation in the most serious way, there are discussions on several economic levels, on rare metals, on energy in the region, on other types of economic collaborations and I wish that, when we go there, this visit will have an economic substance, beyond the security one that is somehow understood."
As for the foreign policy, he mentioned "small choices."
"Already in these seven-eight months we had some small choices to make and which we have made looking either one way or the other, at the interest on that issue. (...) I believe that in foreign policy the role of the president is not to grab headlines in the international media. I think that we, in foreign policy, at least in these eight months that I have travelled, have had some objectives that we have achieved almost a hundred percent. We had to close a period of hesitation and unfulfilled promises and never firm answers regarding France. (...) At the moment, our partnership with France is functional and there are no historical residues," he said.
He also pointed to excellent collaboration "with Germany, and also to the fact that "we had a bilateral issue with Austria that risked taking us out of the OECD path" which "we also resolved".
"In my opinion, what we have to do in foreign policy, at least at the current stage, is to regulate these bilateral issues, sometimes multilateral, so that we are a serious partner," Dan said, pleading for economic diplomacy.
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