Foreign minister delivered speech at meeting of ambassadors of Moldova

Chisinau, August 18 /MOLDPRES/- Speech by Deputy Prime Minister Nicu Popescu, Minister of Foreign Affairs and European Integration at the inauguration of the meeting of the ambassadors of the Republic of Moldova, hosted by the MAEIE on August 18 - 19.

Dear Madam President,

Dear colleagues, you are all welcome back to the premises of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and European Integration, on the occasion of this meeting of the ambassadors of the Republic of Moldova, being the first meeting with a physical presence after a four-year break affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and other events that derailed this structured pace of setting goals and evaluating the performance of the diplomatic service.

Today is a very important occasion to organize ourselves for the coming year. If we look at the past year, we all know that we have had a very difficult year with many crises, with this aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, which has affected us all, which has caused a humanitarian crisis out of proportion in The Republic of Moldova and not only and obviously had major negative effects both for our economy and for energy security.

At the same time, in the past year, we worked to manage these crises, to minimize their impact on the Republic of Moldova and our compatriots, we did everything to continue to defend the freedom of our country, the security of the country and our Europeanness. Since last year, we have structured our foreign policy objectives around the 4Ds, a framework that allows absolutely every diplomat to structure and correctly calculate the objectives they need to implement in their countries of residence.

We have to admit that we have been able to make quite a lot of progress towards achieving several of these goals. The first major objective achieved in the last year is, obviously, our approach to the European Union by obtaining the status of a candidate for EU accession, and by the fact that we as a country practically pass from the category of so-called neighbors of the European Union or eastern partners, in the category of a state that will become a member of the European Union. I calculated, in the period between March, when I submitted the application for joining the European Union and obtaining the candidate status, Madam President, Madam Prime Minister and I had 151 meetings or telephone conversations with our counterparts or colleagues from the states members of the European Union.

At the same time, we did everything so that our approach to the European Union would bring concrete benefits, we worked very well with our colleagues in the government so that European integration has positive, concrete effects for our citizens, for business people. We have done everything to liberalize and facilitate the life of transporters, who want and need to transport goods in the European Union, in order to minimize the impact of enormous prices for energy resources. Also, the generous support from the European Union allowed us to cover part of these expenses generated by the energy crisis, the EU, remaining the most faithful partner of our country, opening the European market more widely and for our farmers, so that our products agricultural products can be exported more easily. We have cooperated very well with the Ministry of Defense to channel more assistance and strengthen our country's defense capability.

On the second D, on the dialogue, we continued the dialogue with our external partners, we managed to bring the country out of isolation, we worked fantastically with Romania, our key partner, our anchor in the European space, and we will discuss in detail and later that we have a very ambitious agenda in our relations with Romania. Obviously another priority direction was Ukraine. We condemned the aggression of the Russian Federation from the first hours.

Diplomacy does not only mean relations with other diplomats, from other countries, it does not mean only the negotiation of agreements, but also a sustained action to help, promote and contribute to a good functioning, to a good interaction with our citizens who are abroad and here it is about the third D, which is about diaspora.

This year we managed to sign 9 agreements that bring concrete benefits to the diaspora, agreements related to social protection, recognition of study diplomas or facilitating the exchange of driver's licenses.

Together with the government team and the Deputy Prime Minister for Digitization we are working intensively on the facilitation and digitization of consular services. Just yesterday we tested the single booking service for our consulates and in the coming weeks this service will be rolled out so that absolutely all our consulates will have the same easy interface for our citizens to benefit from consulate access.

the fourth D is about economic diplomacy, again, it's very important that our diplomatic service does everything to help our economy, the economy that generates jobs, wages, sustains this country, and in that sense, the diplomatic service will step up further action in this field, through several directions of action.

First of all, by strengthening the legal framework that allows us to attract investments, to avoid double taxation with partner states, to facilitate investments in the national economy. A key objective also concerns the promotion of exports especially in these difficult circumstances for our country and region, we are primarily referring to the promotion of agricultural exports. We also acted here, in the Republic of Moldova, not only abroad, to facilitate the access of our producers to our diplomatic network, but also to the diplomatic networks of other states, through a series of events organized monthly by the MAEIE, through which our producers present their production to foreign partners and thus we create platforms through which producers can gain more access to international markets.

Today and tomorrow at this meeting we will discuss our goals for the coming year. We will have video conference contributions from our colleagues, and first of all here I am referring to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Romania Bogdan Aurescu, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, the European Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Oliver Varhelyi and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu , which are very close partner states for the Republic of Moldova, and obviously, in the case of the European Commission, we will have more and more to work through the fact that we have become a candidate state for joining the European Union.

Together with the ambassadors we will also spend a few hours tomorrow at the Diaspora Congress, it will be a great opportunity for us all to reconnect with the diaspora and together with all the ambassadors we will also have an event for a few hours where we will interact with local producers so that the producers to have direct access, including the mobile phones if you want of our ambassadors, because absolutely every member of the diplomatic service will continue to do everything to improve the economic condition of the Republic of Moldova, including by promoting exports.

Photo: MAEIE