Heads of Polish, Romanian, and Turkish diplomacies meet in Bucharest
23.04.2021
On 22-23 April 2021, under the Trilogue format, Minister Zbigniew Rau met in Bucharest with his counterparts from Romania and Turkey, Bogdan Aurescu and Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, respectively. The ministers discussed cooperation within the North Atlantic Alliance, mainly in the context of preparations for the NATO summit in June. The diplomats also talked about the progressing implementation of the Trilogue cooperation programme adopted in 2020 and its possible extension into other thematic areas. They underlined good political and military cooperation of the three countries. “Our countries are the pillars of NATO’s Eastern Flank, standing in the front line of the Alliance and exposed to direct threats to their security,” pointed out Minister Rau, and added: “We agree on the need and the direction of North Atlantic Alliance’s further strategic adaptation, which includes starting work on the new Strategic Concept during next NATO summit.”
Special Trilogue session was devoted to discuss the security situation in the region and was attended by the Foreign Minister of Ukraine Dmytro Kuleba, and Georgia David Zalkaliani. “I am satisfied that together we are looking for ways to effectively react to the difficult security situation in our neighbourhood, especially to Russia’s escalation of tension along Ukraine’s eastern border and on the Black Sea. The presence of Ministers Kuleba and Zalkaliani is a token of the weight we attach to political and security cooperation with these countries. Together we speak in favour of sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and Georgia and consistently support Euro-Atlantic aspirations of the two countries,” declared Minister Rau.
Minister Zbigniew Rau’s programme of the visit also included a meeting with the president of Romania Klaus Iohannis (in the Trilogue format), Polish-Romanian, Polish-Turkish, and Polish-Georgian bilateral consultations. The top Polish diplomat also visited the exhibition “Allies. Poland-Romania. 1918-1939” in the Palace of Parliament to mark the centenary of the Polish-Romanian military alliance (3 March 1921).
The day before the consultations, Minister Rau and his Romanian counterpart attended the conference “Security Challenges from the Baltic to the Black Sea Region. Vision of Romania, Poland and Turkey,” organised jointly by key analytical centres of the three countries – Centre for Eastern Studies from Poland, New Strategy Center from Romania, and Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research from Turkey.
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The meetings of the so-called Polish-Romanian-Turkish Trilogue have been held regularly since 2012 (since 2016 - at the level of foreign ministers). They aim at strengthening cooperation between allies who represent the largest countries of the NATO’s Eastern Flank, and coordinating positions on the core issues for the regional security. Previous meeting was held as a videoconference in April 2020. The ministers announced next meeting of this format to take place in Ankara next year.
MFA Press Office
Photo: Tymon Markowski / MFA
Materials
Trilateral StatementTRILATERAL_STATEMENT_220421.pdf 0.38MB
