Romania has failed to gain a seat of non-permanent member in the United Nations (UN) Security Council, with members voting in favor of Estonia instead.

Following a secret ballot held on Friday, June 7, the UN General Assembly elected five countries to the Security Council, namely Niger, Tunisia, Estonia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. They will take up their seats in January 2020. All 193 UN member states were present to cast their votes, according to Estoniaworld.com.

Every year, five countries are elected to the 15-member Council for a two-year-term. The non-permanent seats are distributed on a regional basis, and Romania competed with Estonia in the East European group. Estonia got 111 votes and Romania received 78 in the first voting round, both below the 129-vote threshold needed to get elected. However, in the second round, 132 members voted for Estonia and only 58 supported Romania.

Romanian president Klaus Iohannis reacted to the news, and said that “a series of non-diplomatic, irresponsible, and counterproductive political declarations” are to be blamed for this result.

“In spite of the efforts of the Romanian diplomacy - which has managed to obtain a considerable number of support commitments from the member states - a series of non-diplomatic, irresponsible and counterproductive political statements, contrary to the traditional foreign policy positions of the state, formulated by some high-level representatives of the Romanian authorities without a mandate and outside their competencies - to which the president of Romania took firm position at the time when they were made - led to alienation of the support already expressed by some partner states and to reticence over Romania's candidacy. The diplomatic efforts put forward were boycotted, creating the impression, erroneous in substance, of a lack of predictability of Romania over important, sensitive and complex foreign policy files,” Iohannis said, quoted in a press release issued by the Romanian Presidency.

The “irresponsible” statements the president talks about are most likely the ones referring to the movement of the Romanian Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, according to local Digi24. Both prime minister Viorica Dancila and former ruling party leader Liviu Dragnea have made several statements on this subject, and every time the president has reacted to them. Most recently, this happened in late March this year when Dancila said that Romania would move its embassy to Jerusalem, a statement criticized by Iohannis, who said this shows the PM’s “utter ignorance in matters of foreign policy.”

On the other hand, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Romania failed to gain a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council because the country engaged in the campaign quite late, in 2017, Digi24 reported. Meanwhile, former defense minister Mihai Fifor, currently an MP representing the ruling party PSD, believes president Iohannis is to blame for this situation because he is the head of Romanian diplomacy. 

"The foreign policy line promoted by Mr. Iohannis, without consulting the Parliament, permanently obstructing the Government in appointing ambassadors, contributed decisively to this result registered at the UN.The president should explain what he did in that capacity he has assigned to himself to obtain that non-permanent membership in the UN Security Council," Fifor wrote in a Facebook post. "It is time for president Iohannis to assume this major diplomatic failure of Romania."

The five States elected last week will take up their seats as non-permanent members of the UN Security Council in January 2020, replacing Cote d’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Kuwait, Peru and Poland.

newsroom@romania-insider.com

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