Bucharest, Sep 9 /Agerpres/ - More efforts are needed "to persuade the Romanian citizens to directly contact diplomatic missions or consular offices in order to request assistance," Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said on Wednesday in the opening of the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy session dedicated to managing consular affairs in the COVID-19 context.
The ForMin also spoke about the management of the situation of Romanian seasonal workers affected by the pandemic, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, stressing the importance of cooperation with the Labor Ministry and the proper deployment of labor attachés of the various missions.
"In many situations you had to take action ex officio, following media information or information received from other sources, you directly contacted dozens of locations, farms or other production units to check the reported situations, to discuss directly with the Romanian citizens in difficulty and offer all the possible support, even if much remains to be done to persuade the Romanian citizens to directly contact the diplomatic missions or consular offices in order to request assistance," he told the consular staff.
Speaking about the need for additional resources in the consular field, Aurescu said that "one of the most important lessons learned during this period is that the consular network and capacity has been, is, and - as we can predict - will further be under significant pressure. It is clear that we need to allocate additional financial and human resources. I return here to the exercise I mentioned - that of classifying diplomatic missions, because it will help us calibrate resource allocations to each mission according to a series of parameters, including those related to the Romanian community in the respective state."
