President Klaus Iohannis will participate, in Vilnius, on Thursday, in the ninth edition of the Three Seas Initiative (3SI) Summit, where the leaders of the participating states will discuss how the Initiative should develop and adapt in the complex regional context.

This includes, according to the Presidential Administration, engaging with partners in the neighbourhood, but also globally in terms of boosting investment and implementing strategic interconnection projects in the three core areas of the Initiative – transport, energy, digital.

President Iohannis will plead, during the Summit, for further streamlining the Initiative and achieving concrete results, especially in terms of improving regional strategic connectivity on the North-South axis.

He will also highlight the growing relevance of the 3SI and its valuable potential, including in the context of the growing number of countries in the region and globally expressing their interest in engaging in this platform.

The head of state will also address the prospect of boosting connectivity with Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova, both of which are associate participants of the Initiative, following the decisions taken at the Bucharest Summit. Iohannis will also highlight that strengthening the resilience of the region as a whole is a vital necessity in the current geopolitical context. In this regard, Klaus Iohannis will highlight, in particular, the added value of the Rail2Sea and Via Carpathia projects, whose implementation will improve military mobility and infrastructure resilience in the region.

The president will reiterate that the country will continue to pursue the strengthening of the Initiative and its instruments, including the Investment Fund and the Innovation Fund, in full synergy with the strategic agenda of the European Union, as well as in the direction of strengthening the transatlantic partnership.

The Three Seas Initiative offers a generous platform for collaboration between EU member states and non-EU countries, with benefits including increasing the quality of life of their citizens and stimulating opportunities for multi-directional cooperation.

President Klaus Iohannis hosted the previous edition of the 3SI Summit last September, where a substantial Joint Declaration was adopted, which was an important milestone for the future and development of the Initiative, especially regarding cross-border interconnections in the area of transport infrastructure, energy and digitisation, but also on the consolidation and diversification of the Initiative’s financial instruments. Also in Bucharest, Greece became the 13th participating state in the Initiative and Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova became associated states. Another important outcome of the Bucharest Summit was the updating of the list of strategic priority projects, the first such list having been launched at the previous Bucharest Summit in 2018.

AGERPRES