Greece 13th member of Three Seas Initiative; associate status for Ukraine, Moldova

 


Sept 6, 2023. Posted by  Balkan Periscope - Hellas

 

The office of the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, announced during the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) Summit in Bucharest, which started on Wednesday, that an agreement will be signed to include Greece as the 13th participating country in this group, while Ukraine and Moldova will obtain associate state status.

Following their joint discussions, President Duda, President Klaus Iohannis of Romania, President Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania, and Prime Minister Andrej Plenković of Croatia held a joint press conference.

 

“The success of this summit is the accession of Greece to the Three Seas Initiative. Greece has been admitted as a full-fledged European Union member to the Three Seas Initiative, but the success is also the accession of Moldova and Ukraine as associated partners - two countries on the path to EU membership,” said President Duda during the press conference.

 

In his view, “this Three Seas Summit is so important and, at the same time, so extensive because the Three Seas Initiative has demonstrated its value, especially recently. We have seen how crucial all the infrastructure projects that we have already undertaken within the Three Seas Initiative, or those we plan to implement, are, as well as those currently in progress,” Duda explained.

 

The Polish President stressed that “the need for supplies to Ukraine, and the export of products from Ukraine - all to enable Ukraine to function as normally as possible in an extremely challenging situation - have shown how important infrastructural connections in Central Europe are and how vital cooperation between our countries is.”

 

John Kerry, the U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, is also participating in this year’s summit.

 

Before the summit began, the office of the Romanian President announced that he would emphasize the importance of the 3SI, given the “brutal and illegal aggression” by Russia against Ukraine over the past year and a half. President Iohannis believes that this initiative has become a “vital tool for strengthening regional and European resilience.”

 

During the summit, the President of Moldova, Maia Sandu, met with Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu. Sandu expressed that Moldova, which shares a border with Ukraine, is “ready to contribute to the connectivity and unity of Europe.”

 

Furthermore, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy joined the summit via a video link.

 

“President Zelenskyy’s participation in this Summit is very important, because today Ukraine becomes an associated country of the Three Seas Initiative, which will allow it to get involved in all the instruments of the Initiative, and also to access investments for strategic interconnection projects. Ukraine will also get closer to the EU and will be able to prepare better for its reconstruction and recovery,” said the head of the Romanian state, in the opening of the 3SI Summit.

 

The two-day summit includes leaders from 12 European Union countries situated between the Baltic, Black, and Adriatic Seas, as well as representatives from partner countries. Its aim is to enhance cooperation in the fields of transportation, energy, and digital technology

 

The Three Seas Initiative includes Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Austria, Estonia, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Latvia, and Lithuania.


Source:

PAP, agerpres.ro