RSS
PM Victor Ponta starts today a visit to Kiev
Prime Minister Victor Ponta on Thursday pays a working visit to Ukraine during which he will have meetings with his counterpart Arseniy Yatsenyuk and with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
The Moldovan counterpart Iurie Leanca and the Romanian chief diplomat Titus Corlatean will be accompanying the Romanian Prime Minister on the visit to Kiev.
'Tomorrow [on Thursday] I shall be in Kiev, in a meeting not only with Ukraine's Prime Minister and President, but also in a trilateral meeting with the Republic of Moldova's Prime Minister. It will be a first meeting of this kind - the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine and Romania,' Ponta announced in the beginning of the Government meeting on Wednesday.
The Prime Minister added that within the visit he would state 'once more the role that Romania must play, as European Union and NATO member state, as stable country in the region, a country actually and concretely supporting the efforts of the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine for democratic development and European integration.'
A topic that could be tackled during the visit is the agreement on the small border traffic between the two countries.
The text of the agreement was signed ad referendum in April by Foreign Affairs Minister Titus Corlatean and his Ukrainian counterpart at that time Andrei Deshitsa.
The agreement regulates the conditions on conducting the small border traffic, namely the frequent crossing of the Romanian-Ukrainian state border by the residents of Romania's or Ukraine's border area who plan to remain in the border area of the other state, mainly for social, cultural, family or economic-justified reasons, for a period not exceeding three months of uninterrupted stay.
The agreement applies to the inhabitants of an area of 30 kilometres on both sides of the common border, an area that can be extended to maximum 50 kilometres from the border in the case of the administrative-territorial units located beyond the 30 kilometre limit.
'It is an extremely important agreement to the free movement, for Ukraine's European destiny, but also to the Ukrainian citizens, including for the Romanian ethnics who live along the border with Romania,' Titus Corlatean said in the opening speech of the Annual Meeting of the Romanian Diplomacy, carried out in Bucharest at the end of August.