David Cameron, the first British Prime Minister to visit Romania in the last 15 years, acknowledged that Romanians and other Europeans contributed to the development of the United Kingdom, but pointed out that his country couldn’t take in such a high number of immigrants. In his speech, after the meeting with Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis, Cameron said he wanted Britain to remain a member of a “reformed European Union”.

David Cameron has visited several EU countries in recent weeks to talks to their leaders about the European Union’s reform, as the UK is preparing for a referendum on whether the country should remain an EU member or not. He visited Romania on Wednesday, December 9, and had meetings with President Klaus Iohannis and Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos.

“I support the principle of free movement to work – it is a basic treaty right and a key part of the single market. And Romanians, alongside other Europeans, make a valuable contribution to the United Kingdom in a wide range of fields, from finance to science and medicine,” David Cameron said in Bucharest.

“But it was never envisaged that free movement would trigger quite such vast numbers of people moving across our continent. And countries have got to be able to cope with all the pressures that it can bring – on our schools, our hospitals, and other public services. Net migration in the UK is running at well over 300,000 a year and that is not sustainable,” he added.

He said the EU leaders needed to find ways to allow member states to make changes to their social security systems that would help them to deal with this issue. “At next week’s summit, we will have a substantive discussion about all the reforms that I have proposed. And I am confident we can find solutions in each area.”

The British Prime Minister also praised Romania’s commitment to increase the budget spending for defense to 2% of its GDP by 2017.

“Our armed forces already train together and today we have discussed how we can strengthen our collaboration further. Romania is updating its naval fleet, which is a potential opportunity to work together with the United Kingdom. And we’re deploying UK military officers to the new NATO headquarters here,” Cameron said.

He ended saying that he wished to see stronger relationships between Romania and the UK in the future. “I am delighted to be the first British Prime Minister to make a bilateral visit to Romania this century. It shouldn’t be another 15 years before one comes back again.”

The previous British Prime Minister who made an official visit to Romania was Tony Blair in 1999. Blair then announced in the Parliament that Romania would join NATO and the EU.

British investments in Romania amounted to only EUR 1.5 billion at the end of 2014.

editor@romania-insider.com