Italy's PM Meloni: We signed joint declaration that increases the two states' cooperation potential
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Thursday that the declaration she and visiting Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu have signed increases the two states' cooperation potential, setting new common goals and priorities in place.
The Romanian community is the largest foreign community residing in Italy, with more than one million people, and makes a highly important contribution to our society. This summit strengthens our friendship, broadens our cooperation to new sectors of common interest. We now signed a very important joint declaration that furthers our potential, creates new goals, new shared priorities. Other important documents signed by our ministers add to this declaration, seven other memoranda of understanding, technical understandings in areas such as defense, justice, energy, civil protection, civil servant training, Meloni said in a joint press statement with Marcel Ciolacu.
She added that one of the pillars of the partnership between Romania and Italy concerns the political and strategic dimension and common security, of paramount importance amid the war unfurling in the center of Europe, at Romania's border.
The internal dimension is an essential characteristic of our relationship. We want to strengthen our cooperation in order to combat terrorism, cyber security threats, organized crime. (...) I thank Prime Minister Ciolacu for the great availability and cooperation he has displayed as regards the judicial aspects. We have many points in common that we have shared through our ministers, I won't name them all now, but for example, I think that an important challenge on our hands is that concerning the possibility that definitively convicted prisoners serve their term in their country of origin, Meloni said.
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is on a two-day working visit to the Italian Republic on February 14 - 15, with the agenda also including the third meeting of the Cabinets in Bucharest and Rome, organized 13 years after the previous intergovernmental summit.