Andrei Marga Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs
“The 4th of July, the anniversary of the independence of the United States of America is a great opportunity for us to celebrate alongside an extremely valuable ally and friend and to proudly emphasize the excellent bilateral cooperation and accomplishments we have achieved in different areas. On this special event, it is a great pleasure to convey to the American people sincere congratulations and best wishes of success and prosperity. Romania and the United States share a Strategic Partnership based on a set of common values, principles, interests and objectives. The potential of the US-Romanian cooperation, acknowledged as early as 1916 by Secretary of War Newton D. Baker, has been since constantly and continuously taken advantage of, so this bilateral relation is today as sound as ever, as comprehensive and diverse as ever.Last year we have witnessed the formal confirmation of the strategic character of the bilateral cooperation between Romania and the United States of America, through the adoption in Washington, on September 13, of the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership for the 21st Century. The added value of this document, the first to point out explicitly the real nature of our longstanding partnership, lies not only in the fact that it reasserts the strategic character of our relations, but also in its long term implications for the substance of our bilateral collaboration. It offers a political umbrella for new concrete opportunities in advancing our cooperation beyond the broad political-military interactions, by reaching deeper into all aspects included in the Declaration: consolidating the economic component, facilitating and encouraging people-to-people contacts, improving the collaboration in the fields of communications and information technology, energy, innovation, culture and education.Besides the Joint Declaration on the Strategic Partnership, the Agreement with the US on the deployment of the ballistic missile defense system in Romania, signed on the same occasion, represents the most ambitious strategic project ever developed between Romania and the United States and marks a new stage of the cooperation between the two nations, addressing key future risks and challenges.
