Spokeswoman Dobrovolschi: Reducing Presidential Administration's budget makes it impossible to host Three Seas Initiative Summit

The president's spokeswoman, Madalina Dobrovolschi, said, on Tuesday, that the Government's cut to the Presidential Administration's budget is of a nature to render impossible the hosting of the Three Seas Initiative Summit. 

According to Dobrovolschi, the presidential administration's budget for 2018 was established for 57.558 million lei, because this is the necessary amount for properly supporting the president's activity. 

"In the context of a negative budget correction on such a scale, Romania could not be represented and will not be able to honor its international commitments, such as hosting and organizing the Three Seas Initiative Summit and the events of 2019, opportunity for Romania to be the president of the EU Council. Thus, the reduction, made by the Government, to the Presidential Administration's budget is of such a nature to render impossible to host the Three Seas Initiative Summit, which is hosted by Romania and organized by the Presidential Administration, on September 17 and 18," Dobrovolschi declared, at Cotroceni Palace. 

According to the President's spokeswoman, this year's summit is a special one, which presumes the participation of 12 heads of state from Central and South-Eastern Europe, the president of the European Commission, high ranking officials from the United States and leaders of European and international financial institutions. The summit includes the organizing of the first edition of the Business Forum of the Three Seas Initiative, with over 600 participants - businesspeople and high ranking officials of the 12 states of the Initiative, from the rest of the EU and USA, from the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia and Western Balkans, as well as representatives of renown think-tanks for the debate component of the Forum. 

Moreover, Madalina Dobrovolschi said that this Summit is important because it is the first one that is about to produce concrete results: apart from the Business Forum, the Summit was about to approve a list of major projects of interconnection in the fields of transport, energy and digital that will stimulate the economic growth of the region's states, to create a network of Chambers of Commerce in the region, to stimulate the creation of an Investment Fund of the Initiative, and other very important elements. 

"For all these results, the Presidential Administration, together with other state institutions, including from the Government's structure, has intensely worked, for over a year, and these results are now jeopardized, seriously and irresponsibly affecting not only Romania's interests of foreign policy and development, as well as the international reputation of the Romanian state, but also the interests of the Central and South-Eastern Europe. Romania's foreign partners will thus know that the Government is blocking our country's international commitments," Dobrovolschi said. 

She also showed that cutting the budget funds by the Government will also have a negative impact upon the other actions of foreign policy that were undertaken by the president.