“The summit was finally a successful one,” President Basescu stated at the conclusion of the event attended by representatives of 12 member states from the region.
President Traian Basescu has announced on Wednesday the adoption of a joint declaration by the Summit of heads of state and government of South-East Europe Cooperation Process (SEECP) member states, showing that this represents a revitalization of the organization. The common declaration includes details about the modalities in which a state can advance on its way to become an EU member state.
“Today’s summit was finally a successful one. We have managed to adopt a declaration, which has not happened during the past two summits. (…) The fact that the adoption of a declaration was successful revitalizes the organization and makes it once again a credible partner of the EU,” said the head of state at the end of the Summit of heads of state and government of South-East Europe Cooperation Process (SEECP) member states, quoted by Agerpres.
In the context, he emphasized that SEECP has the capacity to support the accession of countries to EU and NATO.
The president stated that the summit of SEECP countries comes at a very important moment, immediately after the elections for the European Parliament, which led to an increase of the representation in the EP of anti-European, xenophobic and extremist parties. “This is one more reason why we must value our organization, in order to reach the objectives of members states, especially in regard to integration,” Basescu mentioned, adding that he purposely chose the date of the summit the day before the European Council, due for today and tomorrow in Brussels, where one of the matters of the agenda is the enlargement process.
The Romanian president said that the summit comes against the background of events in Ukraine. “I know that we have differently nuanced approaches, but it remains a reality that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine were affected and an organization like ours cannot ignore this,” Basescu stated.
The Bucharest summit was attended by the 12 member states of the region: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Turkey, Serbia, Slovenia, R. of Moldova, Montenegro and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Other guests were officials from Pristina, the European Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule and the secretary general of the Regional Cooperation Council, Goran Svilanovic.
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