Senator Basescu: PM's speech does pinpoint any of Romania's priorities during EU Council Presidency

Former president Traian Basescu, senator of the People's Movement Party (PMP, opposition) said on Wednesday that Prime Minister Viorica Dancila's speech in Parliament's plenary sitting on the working program of the Romanian Presidency at the Council of the European Union is correct from the point of view of "Brussels' official language" but which "does not pinpoint any of Romania's priorities".

"A correct speech from the point of view of the Brussels' official language, but it does not pinpoint anything that refers to Romania's priorities. I would ask a question: Mrs Prime Minister did not feel the need to receive a mandate from the Romanian Parliament in view of exercising the Presidency of the EU Council? Has the Prime Minister's speech of today been correlated with the President's point of view? Because the Union will work for six months with a President who goes to the European Council and has views and a Government going to the Council of the European Union and has its views," Basescu said on Wednesday in the plenary sitting of Parliament.

He stressed that he does not want one to rely on the premise that Romania, during the holding of this rotating presidency, is just a "meeting organizer".

"From the Prime Minister's speech I understood that holding the rotating presidency is limited to being a facilitator. Totally wrong. You are a negotiator, you are a facilitator of meetings in Sibiu and Bucharest, if you want, but you have very precise points of view in the Council of the EU. So I would not want us to start from the premise that we are just meeting organizers, but we have the mission to set points of view and to back them and to make alliances in order to achieve the goals we have set. From the meeting today, it is clear that we have not set any objectives. For example, for the Justice and Home Affairs formation, what are the rotating presidency's solutions for limiting migration? We should have heard here. Or which are the rotating presidency's solutions for Romania and Bulgaria to join the Schengen area, or what are the rotating presidency's solutions for diminishing the terrorist risk in the EU?" Basescu mentioned some questions.