Romania- France, remarkable economic cooperation

In February, when the Romanian PM Victor Ponta paid an official visit to Paris, he extended an invitation to his French counterpart Jean-Marc Ayrault to come, in turn, on a visit to Romania.

This has once again sanctioned the re-launch of the Romanian- French strategic partnership, concluded in 2008, which had reached a dead end in the past five years due to differences on the issue of the ethnic Roma with Romanian citizenship.

The partnership, in the economic, political and cultural fields, does exist and has to function at its full capacity, irrespective of the problems arising at a certain moment, which should be solved through dialogue, said both the French PM and the Romanian PM on the occasion of the latter’s visit to Paris.

Almost 6 months after the Romanian PM’s visit to Paris, the French PM Jean-Marc Ayrault accepted the invitation to come to Bucharest, the agenda of talks focusing on European and economic issues.

At the Cotroceni Palace, the French PM and the Romanian President, Traian Basescu, talked about the support Paris granted to Romania to obtain a new aid agreement from the EU and the IMF.

The Romanian President also pointed to some of the problems Bucharest has to solve as soon as possible:

Traian Basescu: “One issue is related to the process of Romania’s integration into the EU structures, and I’m referring to Romania’s joining the Schengen space and euro zone. Other critical issues are related to Romania’s competitiveness on foreign markets and to the Roma minority, which has marred Romania’s image quite frequently. We need to find solutions to solve the problems of this minority in a European way”.

France has always been open to Romania’s joining the Schengen space, the French PM said, adding that, in his opinion, this is a two-stage process, the first stage being the elimination of air border controls.

The Romanian PM, Victor Ponta, has talked about the situation of the Roma minority: We have an excellent police cooperation meant to fight illegal actions, we have developed a relationship at the level of local authorities in order to better integrate the Roma minority here in the Romanian local communities. We are convinced that, through investments in education, by creating jobs and providing better living conditions in Romania for the Roma minority, we’ll be able to have long term results”.

The French PM referred to bilateral economic cooperation as being remarkable and added that good relations should report progress.

A contract has been signed under which the French company Thales will invest 60 million euros in the building of a high power laser in Magurele (in southern Romania), the biggest in the world.

The two sides have also signed a cooperation agreement for the management of radioactive waste and a memorandum in the education and research fields. Romania has the highest number of French speaking people in Europe said the French PM, who participated in the opening of the new building of the French high school in Bucharest. 40% of the students attending this high school are Romanians.