First meeting of Working Group to implement approved projects at I3M Summit

By Jerom Bolt
Deputy Prime Minister Ana Birchall coordinated on Friday the first meeting of the Working Group to monitor and coordinate the implementation of projects approved at the Three Seas Initiatives Summit in Bucharest, an occasion to hold discussions on the progress of the projects adopted at the Summit on the three priority axes – energy, transport, digital, as well as on the registered developments regarding the establishment of the Investment Fund of the Initiative.
Ana Birchall stressed at the beginning of the meeting that the I3M Summit in Bucharest was a milestone, being the first such event that resulted in the promotion of concrete projects of particular geostrategic importance for the entire region.
‘The Government team, under the coordination of Prime Minister Viorica Dancila, contributed essentially to the success of the Summit by identifying and promoting national priority projects. Romania has thus succeeded in fulfilling the I3M objective of delivering concrete results and tangible projects. (…) We discussed with the fellow ministers about the stage of the implementation of the projects agreed at the Bucharest Three Seas Summit in September, as well as about the measures necessary to obtain financing to turn them into a reality,’ said Deputy Prime Minister Ana Birchall, according to a press release on Friday.
Ana Birchall mentioned that in a complex regional geopolitical context, the 3-Sea Initiative and the interconnection projects agreed in this format could become a ‘benchmark of stability, security and sustainable economic development.’
‘I am confident that the Three Seas Initiative can bring substantial economic benefits to the Member States and our neighbors. Closer cooperation in interconnectivity concrete projects between our countries will serve as proof that, unlike other options, the joint European and Euro-Atlantic prospect is the only one that can ensure prosperity and sustainable growth, in line with the expectations of our citizens,’ Ana Birchall said.
The Three Seas Initiative is a regional cooperation forum of the Central and Eastern European countries that are members of the European Union and was launched by Croatia and Poland.
Originally conceived as a flexible and informal political platform at the presidential level, the Initiative (I3M) brings together the 12 EU Member States located on a north-south axis from the Baltic Sea to the Adriatic and Black Sea – Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
This format was established after those in Croatia (2016) and Poland (2018), and at the I3M Summit in Bucharest (September 2018), a list of major interconnection projects in the energy, transport and digital fields was approved. (Source: Agerpres).