In his reply letter, Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu recently announced that in December 2020 the then Prime Minister of Romania approved the memorandum proposed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regarding the resizing and modernization of Romania’s consular network in the 2021-2025 investigation. It provides for the establishment of general consulates in Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg in order to accommodate Romanian citizens in northern Germany. These consulates are scheduled to start operations in 2023 and 2025 respectively. As for moving the consulate general from Bonn to Düsseldorf, the proposal will be considered in a re-evaluation of the consular network. Establishing consulates would require the consent of the host country, several stages of approvals, and the provision of logistical and financial resources, writes the foreign minister.

Regarding the Consulate General in Salzburg, which is scheduled to open in 2022, projects have been started with a view to ensuring its functioning, according to Aurescu’s letter. This consulate general is to be available to the Romanian communities in central and western Austria and to relieve the consular department of the embassy in Vienna.

Aurescu also announced that the ministry he heads has initiated a reform of consular activities with the aim of digitizing them and reducing bureaucracy. There is also the possibility of instituting temporary mobile consular posts in areas where a large Romanian community lives at great distance from a Romanian consulate. Since 2020, Romanian citizens living abroad have been able to contact 59 mobile consular offices with their concerns in this regard.

“Through my initiative, I wanted to draw attention to the issue of consulates in Germany and Austria and promote the establishment of further consular offices because nothing has happened in these two countries.” In Italy, Spain and Great Britain, on the other hand, several new Romanian consulates have already been established , said Ovidiu Ganţ. The DFDR deputy expressed the hope that the dates mentioned in Minister Aurescu’s letter will also be applied, according to a press release from the state forum.