President Rumen Radev attended a business forum in Warsaw on Tuesday. The event is during the Three Seas Summit to present and discuss various projects for the development of the region’s transport, energy and digital connectivity.
"It is extremely important for us to work more actively with our strategic partners and international financial institutions and enable the business to be more efficient," Radev said.
He noted that over the years the Three Seas Initiative has evolved significantly. The initiative's investment fund, although insufficient, has proved to be a working financial mechanism, Radev underlined. "The real value and vision of the Three Seas Initiative goes far beyond infrastructure, money and economics. It is about the level of ambition for the future of our region and of Europe, for the development of trust and cooperation," the President said.
At the fourth summit of the Initiative in 2019 in Ljubljana, Slovenia, it was decided to establish an international investment fund to support the implementation of priority projects in the region of the Initiative member states.
"Who could have thought ten years ago, when the initiative was established, that Europe would be facing such challenges as the COVID-19, the energy crisis, the war in Ukraine - all of which reveal the extreme need for much better connectivity, transport, energy, digital and strong regional cooperation, which are the main pillars of the initiative," the head of State said.
"During the Sofia Summit in 2021, as hosts, we proposed the creation of an Innovation Fund for the initiative because we need to overcome fragmentation and strengthen connectivity in science, research, education and innovation. I am very pleased that this fund has finally been established because today we see the race in the field of artificial intelligence, which is vital for our economic growth and future," Radev added.
He arrived in Poland on Monday at the invitation of his Polish counterpart Andrzej Duda. Later on Tuesday, he will participate in the 10th edition of the Three Seas Summit.
The Three Seas Initiative is aimed to promote cooperation and connectivity in the energy, transport and digital domains among 13 EU Member States: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. The Initiative also includes Ukraine and Moldova as associated countries, and Germany, the European Commission, the United States and Japan as strategic partners.
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