Ukraine has been given the status of participating partner in the Three Seas Initiative (3SI). The Initiative is a political-economic platform consisting of 12 states members of the European Union located between the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea. Meeting in Riga, Latvia, the leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia have decided to establish a new type of partnership, to which other countries in central and eastern Europe have access too, even if they are not members of the bloc.”
We believe that 3SI can be a platform to support Ukraine’s recovery. We support Ukraine’s ambition to join the EU” reads the joint declaration adopted at the Riga summit. Participants encourage the governments of the countries in the Initiative region to coordinate the implementation of their national recovery plans aimed at ensuring a better security of energy supply and infrastructures’ connectivity and sustainability.
President Klaus Iohannis announced that, next year, Romania will once again host the summit of the Three Seas Initiative. He specified that taking over the mandate of organizer of the event will bring back to the Black Sea the decision-making center of the Initiative. The projects within the Initiative, a priority for Romania, are Rail-2-Sea and Via Carpathia, said the head of state, who mentioned that their implementation will improve the connections between the participating countries, but also military mobility and resilience in the field of infrastructure in the region.
Klaus Iohannis also stated that he will discuss with Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and the relevant ministers, to see how Romania can accelerate the implementation of the interconnection projects of the Three Seas Initiative. Klaus Iohannis:
„We must not think that we will build a brand-new highway from the Baltic to the Black Sea. This link will contain parts of the expressways or highways that already exist. The idea is to connect them in such a way that we have a fluid connection. The same goes for the rail link. The Ministries of Transport in our states have been negotiating these issues for years, and as we do every year, with sections of the highway and modernized sections of the railway, the same happens in Poland, in Latvia and everywhere„.
The head of state, Klaus Iohannis, announced that talks with Ukraine will begin in parallel, to see which of the Initiative’s investment projects the neighboring country could participate in.
In turn, the Polish President Andrzej Duda said that work on interconnection projects was intense in his country. With regard to gas interconnectivity, Duda recalled that the gas interconnection between Poland and Lithuania had been opened in early May. Latvian President Egils Levits also stressed the need for a focus on national infrastructure projects. (Leyla Cheamil)
