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Romanian citizens were registered with the Italian Trade Register.
As I already mentioned, our countries are also connected by very close political and cultural relations, enjoying a substantive collaboration on issues of common interest in the economic, social and cultural fields that take into account the current European and international context.
Since the opening of the first Romanian diplomatic agency in Rome in 1873 until the present day, such relations have undergone a number of changes, and the most important developments have taken place since the 1990s, in which the common membership of NATO and the European Union played, of course, a favourable role. The political and diplomatic dialogue is therefore
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constant and intense and takes place at bilateral, European and international level.
Another key factor in the Romanian-Italian relationship is the excellent economic and commercial cooperation, with a total value of bilateral trade that reached in 2017 the highest level in the last ten years: EUR 14.61 billion (a 7.62% increase compared to 2016). By the end of 2018 the figure might exceed EUR 15 billion, taking into account the positive trend of this relationship. Italy is Romania’s second-largest trading partner, accounting for 10.8% of the total Romanian foreign trade.
More than 45 000 Romanian companies with Italian capital were established in Romania in the past 28 years, of which about 23 400 are still active, Italy being ranked first in the top of foreign investors in this regard.
Finally, I hope that this anniversary moment, the celebration of 100 years of national unity, is an opportunity to reflect on Romania’s future, starting from the models offered by the founders of the Great Union and taking into account the existing challenges. In the first semester of 2019, Romania will hold the Presidency of the EU Council for the first time since its accession to the European Union, an exercise in which it can prove its deep commitment to the European values and the consolidation of the European project, inspired by Dimitrie Gusti, who stated in 1930: “Europe is (...) a human continent, a spiritual creation, a splendid manifestation of will and thinking. Europe is not a territory, but a social and spiritual idea, it is the society of the European peoples.”