The Diplomat
The Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, held yesterday in Vilnius, his first meeting with his new colleague from Romania, Luminita Odobescu, with whom he analyzed the 10 years of the Spanish-Romanian Strategic Association that are now completed.
Albares and Odobescu met on the sidelines of the Atlantic Alliance Summit being held in the Lithuanian capital, and, according to the Spanish minister on his Twitter account, they agreed to continue deepening “the excellent Spain-Romania relations for the benefit of of our peoples, and our excellent cooperation within the EU and NATO”.
For her part, Luminita Odobescu stressed, on the same social network, that the two countries “remain fully committed to strengthening the bilateral Strategic Association, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this month, and to our excellent cooperation within the EU and NATO.” .
Romania wants to continue counting on the support of Spain for its entry into the Schengen area of free movement of the European Union and is confident that the semester of the Spanish Presidency of the EU will be favorable for Austria to lift the veto that maintains that accession, which requires unanimity of the Member States. Austria claimed at the end of 2022 to oppose entry the increase in the number of asylum seekers from third countries entering the country through Romania.
Recently, the new Romanian prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu, said that in the coming months he will present a plan to try to change the Austrian government’s mind.
In the bilateral field, Romania hopes that a dual nationality agreement with Spain can be finalized, which would benefit one million Romanians living in our country. The current Spanish government has shown itself in favor and the Romanian authorities are confident that if there is a change of political sign after the elections on July 23, the commitment will be maintained.
