The participants of the "Three Seas" Summit debated the issue of the drone that fell in Romania

What should have been a success for President Klaus Iohannis - Romania being the first country to organize two editions of the Three Seas Initiative Summit (I3M) - will go down in history as the moment when the head of state had to contradict everything he said in the last three days, when he denied the information coming from Kiev about a Russian Shahed drone that fell on Romanian territory.

"I was informed in real time by the Ministry of Defense about this discovery and I requested an urgent and professional investigation of the origin of these components, as well as the moment and circumstances in which they arrived on the territory of Romania. If it is confirmed that these elements come from a Russian drone, such a situation would be completely inadmissible and a serious violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Romania, a NATO allied state. As I mentioned before, these attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, which are war crimes, take place at a very short distance from the Romanian border. However, we are alert and in permanent contact with the other NATO allies. I repeat: within NATO we are very well defended, and Romania benefits from extremely strong security guarantees, the strongest in our entire history", declared President Klaus Iohannis, at the opening of the summit, regarding the new information provided by the head of the MApN .

Regarding the Russian drone that crashed in our country, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, an online participant at the I3M Summit, said: "In connection with those fragments found in Romania, there were attacks on our infrastructure, we also had victims... These are consequences of the attacks on the ports of Chilia, Reni and Ismail. What can I tell you? Think what would have happened if Putin had managed to get a proper foothold in Ukraine. This is what would have happened. This is what he was planning. In the past we were in a period of captivity due to a lack of solidarity. February 24, 2022 changed everything and we all managed to show acts of solidarity.

When Ukrainian ports are bombed almost every night, we have to deal with and constantly pay attention to our logistics. It is, after all, a brutal aggression against everyone, including Europeans. The consequences are felt everywhere".

We remind you that for three days, Government representatives and President Klaus Iohannis said that the information presented by the former Ukrainian Minister of Defense regarding the crash of a Russian drone on Romanian territory is not real, because yesterday, exactly on the day of the I3M summit, Angel Tîlvăr, the Minister of National Defense, who traveled to the area where the incident took place, to declare that remains of a Russian drone produced by Iran were discovered on Romanian territory. The Minister of National Defense admitted that he had wrongly informed President Iohannis, because initially he had no element to confirm the information provided by the Ukrainian side.

"In the context in which we find ourselves, of war on our border, we have a fluid situation. All our communication has been made in good faith and based on the evidence available to us. We cannot make statements that commit the Romanian state based on assumptions. MApN initially informed me, in good faith, that there was no evidence, that it was only suppositions, but later the situation changed. We have informed NATO allies. Our NATO ambassador was tasked with briefing the Secretary General and allies, which happened this morning. To the extent that the research brings new evidence, we can take the next steps and communicate everything that is found", stated the president Klaus Iohannis, at the press conference held at the end of the I3M Summit.

President Iohannis mentioned that the bombing of Ukrainian ports on the Danube makes it difficult to export Ukrainian grain and that our country, through which 25 million tons of grain from Ukraine have been transited so far, will have to find new transport possibilities and new transport routes on the infrastructure by road, rail, river and through Romania's territorial waters of the Black Sea.

• Greece becomes a member of I3M, the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine become associated states

The second I3M summit organized in Bucharest represented the moment of expansion of this regional organization, which since yesterday, by welcoming Greece, counts 13 members, but also the co-optation of two associated participating states - the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine.

"We reaffirm the importance of the Initiative for strengthening the resilience of the region by improving connectivity. (...) We welcome the Hellenic Republic as the 13th participating state of I3M, which strengthens the Initiative and greatly increases its potential as a platform for improving the development of the economy, the connectivity of transport, energy and digital infrastructures on the North-South axis and for strengthening EU cohesion. (...) We also recognize the efforts made by the Republic of Moldova to withstand increasing pressures, in a dramatically changed geopolitical and geoeconomic reality, and we welcome this country as an associated participating state of the I3M, alongside Ukraine, and we look forward to strengthening and diversifying our cooperation in joint projects to promote strategic interconnection in the I3M region and with our Eastern European neighbors, thus facilitating their integration into the EU. We also welcome the granting of EU candidate country status to Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova. We recognize the commitment and substantial efforts of Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova to fulfill the necessary conditions in the EU accession process, and we encourage both countries to continue on the path of reforms, including based on the recommendations of the Venice Commission. We will continue to support these countries on their way to join the EU", states the I3M Summit Declaration of Heads of State and Government.

The cited document also refers to the I3M priority interconnection projects in the three key areas - transport, energy and digital.

At the end of the summit, President Klaus Iohannis declared that cyber security was the first topic of debate based on Romania's efforts and was also mentioned in the joint statement.

"We established the establishment of an I3M Innovation Fund complementary to existing financial vehicles and focused on advanced technologies, which will respond to the growing investment needs in cross-border innovative projects, allocate more investments in technological advances and strengthen the innovation ecosystem throughout the I3M region, in line with European priorities for a sustainable and technologically advanced economic transition. Special attention will be paid to the consolidation of the financial instrument, a successor to the investment fund whose foundations were laid at the 2018 summit in Bucharest, which has already financed projects worth 6 billion euros," said President Klaus Iohannis.

For his part, Andrzej Duda, the president of Poland, said: "In the conditions of the war in Ukraine and its need to export its agricultural products, it has been demonstrated how important the infrastructure links in Central Europe are. We can say that, in the period 2018-2021, the member states of I3M spent 80 billion euros on such projects; if we add other expenses, we reach projects of 100 billion euros. A future project will be the realization of a gas interconnector that we will do with Lithuania and will connect Germany and Slovakia. There is also the Via Carpathica project, and the railway project, which are important for security, but also for the economic development of the region, including tourism, and the interconnectivity between states. All the projects we do also support Europe's infrastructure".

The Prime Minister of Croatia, Andrej Plenkovic, said that the debates at the summit lead to the improvement of I3M, which is reflected in the participation of several business people in the Economic Forum of I3M, an event that takes place today in Bucharest. The Croatian official stated that the mutual support of the I3M member states in the face of the effects of floods and fires generated by climate change was also discussed during the summit. He also brought up cooperation in the field of energy interconnectivity and mentioned that his country wants to become a regional hub for the supply of LNG.

The President of Lithuania, Gitanas Nauseda, said that the I3M based on the North-South axis will become a regional cooperation framework that allows the development of transport routes, energy routes and the transport of military equipment in crisis situations such as the one generated by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia.

During the summit, President Klaus Iohannis had meetings with Maia Sandu, the President of the Republic of Moldova, and Alexander van der Bellen, the President of Austria.

"Very good discussion with Maia Sandu, the president of the Republic of Moldova, on the sidelines of the Summit of the 3 Seas Initiative regarding the progress of the integration of the Republic of Moldova into the European Union, including the opening of accession negotiations, as well as the strategic interconnections of Romania and the Republic of Moldova", wrote the president Klaus Iohannis , on the official page of the social network X, formerly Twitter.

Regarding the meeting with the President of Austria, Klaus Iohannis said: "I appreciate his continued support for a solution in favor of Romania's accession to the Schengen area as soon as possible. We also discussed the security situation and the enlargement of the European Union".

The Three Seas Initiative (Baltic Sea, Black Sea and Adriatic Sea) is a flexible and informal platform policy founded in 2015 and which initially brought together 12 member states of the European Union located between the three mentioned seas - Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia .

Next year's I3M summit will be organized by Lithuania, and the 2025 summit will be held in Hungary.