Croatia's President: Third summit of 3Seas Initiative mirrors determination to have fully integrated EU

The 3rd Summit of the Three Seas Initiative mirrors the determination to have a fully integrated European Union, a stronger economic partner in the transatlantic relationship, President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic affirmed on the second day of this summit. 

"Thus, a stronger economic partner in the transatlantic relation, the energy corridors, the transport infrastructure, the modernization of our economy. By strengthening the transport connections, the full integration with the rest of the continent will be feasible, the artificial yet existing divisions will be wiped out, overall, they will absolutely contribute to a higher, level of prosperity of the EU. We therefore need a set of economic, energy veins, railways, telecommunications, roads to create a foundation for a stronger cohesion. We could unleash this region's potential through cooperation and thus we will have a more resilient, more prosperous Europe," Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic asserted. 

She stressed that by the launch on Monday of the first business forum on the sidelines of the Three Seas Initiative Summit, the commercial societies could have bigger access to the global markets, an involvement of the foreign community could be drawn in relation to investment, so that the interested companies can have the possibility to talk and kick off B2B direct relations. 

The President of Croatia emphasized that in 2016, in Dubrovnik, a catalogue containing more than 150 projects was presented, worth over 45 billion euro, and this year "we completed a short list of mutual interest priority projects" of interconnectivity, energy, transport and digitization. 

"Substantial resources will be necessary to this end. We hail the initiative to create an investment fund of the 3Seas Initiative that will ensure additional resources," the Croatian top dignitary stressed. 

Kolinda Grabar Kitarovic reiterated that the final goal of this Initiative is to turn Central Europe into the backbone of the European Union, based on three major pillars: economic convergence between what unfortunately is further called Old Europe and the New Europe, or the East and the West of the continent; cohesion in our own area and with the rest of the EU; the transatlantic connection, and all these in the fields of transports, energy, the energy security in particular, and digitization, that is one of the pre-conditions for our region's evolution. 

She added that there are visible discrepancies among the various parts of Europe that must be wiped out, so as to bring more cohesion.