ForMin Aurescu, SecGen of Community of Democracies, discuss increasing role and profile of CoD

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, welcomed, on Tuesday, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) headquarters, the Secretary General of the Community of Democracies (CoD), Thomas Garrett, who is on a working visit to Bucharest, in the context of the periodic consultation of the Romanian Presidency of the CoD with the organization's secretariat.

According to the MAE, during discussions, Minister Bogdan Aurescu emphasized the renewed commitments of Romania to support the activity of the CoD and to promote democratic principles and values at the global level, in the context of the decision to expand by one year the mandate of the Romanian Presidency, assumed initially in the 2019-2021 period, until September 2022.

The head of Romanian diplomacy discussed with the Secretary General of the CoD the opportunities generated by the preparation of the tenth ministerial meeting of the Community of Democracies, as well as the second edition of the CoD Youth Forum, which will take place in New York, on the sidelines of the high level segment of the 76th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, in September, Agerpres informs.

Aurescu and Garett agreed upon the necessity to connect the CoD to efforts to protect and promote democracy, including from the perspective of granting support to the organization of the Global Summit of Democracies, announced by the US President, Joe Biden. The Minister of Foreign Affairs also emphasized the importance of continuing efforts in view of increasing the role and profile of the Community of Democracies. In this context, he made reference to the importance of increasing democratic resilience, mentioning that Romania established the Euro-Atlantic Resilience Center (E-ARC), which will comprise in its domain of action aspects correlated to this objective.

In his turn, Thomas Garett expressed satisfaction towards the "excellent" cooperation with the Romanian side and gave assurances that the Permanent Secretariat will continue to support the good conduct of the Romanian mandate as Presidents of the CoD.

The program of the visit of the delegation of the Community of Democracies led by Secretary General Thomas Garrett also included a working meeting with State Secretary for Global Affairs and Diplomatic Strategies, Cornel Feruta, as well as applied discussions with the specialty departments within MAE.

The tenth ministerial meeting of the CoD will take place on the sidelines of the high-level meeting of the 76th session of the General Assembly of the United Nations, in September. The event was scheduled to take place in Bucharest, in June 2020, to mark 20 years since the adoption of the Warsaw Declaration, the founding act of the CoD, yet it was postponed due to the restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.