NATO anti-missile shield made Romania safe, interim president says

Interim president Ilie Bolojan marked 21 years since Romania's accession to the North Atlantic Alliance by stating that the NATO anti-missile shield in southern Romania made the country safe, allowing it to develop economically.

NATO membership meant that Romania was a safe place, Bolojan said, adding that this was “especially due to the support provided by the United States of America, the most important force in the Alliance.”

“Today marks 21 years since Romania joined NATO, an important milestone that has strengthened our country’s security and stability. Thanks to NATO’s shield, Romania has become a safe place where citizens have lived in peace and companies have invested, developing the economy,” said Ilie Bolojan on Facebook.

“This year, we are celebrating 145 years of diplomatic relations with the USA, a strategic partner and a trusted friend. Romania will continue to contribute to promoting global security and democratic values,” he added.

Romania received an invitation to open the accession negotiations for NATO membership at the Prague Summit in 2002, together with other six states: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Two years later, Romania officially became a NATO member upon depositing its instrument of accession to the North Atlantic Treaty with the US State Department in Washington DC on March 29, 2004.

Romanian officials have struggled to create ties with the Trump administration after US vice president JD Vance said that the decision to annul the presidential elections last December was based on "flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors."

Last week, Bolojan said that Vance was right in saying that Romanian democracy “is not in its best shape” following the cancelled 2024 presidential elections.

"We need to understand the American perspective on freedoms as well because the United States has very tough electoral campaigns that we see unfolding in every election cycle. However, the stability of the American political system is different, and foreign interference does not have the same impact there as it does in Romania. From this point of view, if we were a fully consolidated democracy, we should have been more resistant to such attacks,” the interim president said, cited by G4Media.

(Photo source: Presidency.ro)