365 Overview – Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis, after one year in office: 7 European Councils, 13 foreign bilateral visits, one diplomatic journey to UN General Assembly and visit to the White House

On December 21, Klaus Iohannis marked a year since he was installed in the highest position in the state, the president of Romania. One year after the the inaugural speech in Parliament, speech devoted to drawing new directions that the President proposed to follow, what identifies the period in which the challenges have not disappeared, but intensified, the European unity was tested and neither the internal climate, whose tone was given by deaf political battles, was not the most appropriate, including tragic moments that were reached.

CaleaEuropeană.ro proposes a balance sheet of the activities of the Romanian President, including the most important events, both internal and external.

External:

• 7 European Councils (extraordinary and informal) attended by the President in office in February, March, April, June, September, October and November. At the 8th (December), he delegated the new prime minister Dacian Cioloș;
• 3 international Summits of European Union (EU-CELAC; EU-Africa; EU-Turkey);
• attended Eastern Partnership Summit in Riga (21-22 May 2015);
• received the visits of five heads of state and governments (Rosen Plevneliev – Bulgaria, Recep Tayyip Erdogan- Turkey, Anibal Cavaco Silva – Portugal, Andrzej Duda – Poland, David Cameron – United Kingdom);
• two meetings with the NATO Secretary General in Brussels in January and in Bucharest in July;
• participated in a regional summit dedicated to the Western Balkans on migration;
• held talks with all the leaders of the EU institutions: Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk, Martin Schulz;
• had a meeting with Romanians MEP;
• held 13 bilateral foreign visits (France, Moldova, Germany, Poland, Ukraine, Croatia, Italy, Vatican, Spain, Serbia, Austria, United States, Slovakia);
• participated in the work of the 70th session of the UN General Assembly where he had three bilateral meetings with the president of China, Turkmenistan and Estonia, met with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and General Assembly President, Mogens Likketoft and attended dinners offered by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and US President Barack Obama;
• hosted a summit of heads of state of Central and Eastern Europe in November;
• participated with over 150 world leaders at the opening of the COP21 Climate Change Conference;
• The President visited Paris 3 times (Solidarity March, bilateral visit to President Hollande and COP21 Conference) and Brussels 11 times (7 European Councils, 2 EU international summits, 1 regional summit between EC – Western Balkans and one bilateral visit to the EU institutions and NATO).

Read also One year with Klaus Iohannis – The President’s journey – Security, excellence chapter

Internal:

• enacted the law of postal voting for parliamentary elections in 2016;
• appointed two new directors to the Romanian Intelligence Service (Eduard Hellvig) and the Foreign Intelligence Service (Mihai Razvan Ungureanu);
• presented to the Parliament of Romania the new National Defense Strategy;
• organized consultations with the parliamentary political parties on all the major themes (allocation of 2% of GDP on defense, postal voting law, the appointment of a new government) and received a largely consensus on these topics;
• organized, for the first time, consultations with the civil society for the appointment of a new government;
• appointed, for the first time, a new government cabinet;
• addressed the Romanian Parliament five times.

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