ZAGREB, September 17, 2018 – US President Donald Trump has sent a message to participants in a summit of the Three Seas Initiative taking place in Bucharest, Romania, confirming his country’s strong support for the development of energy, transport and digital infrastructure in the area between the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas, the US Embassy in Bucharest stated on Monday.
The United State will stay a strong ally and partner to the Initiative, Trump said in his message to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis, the host of the summit that will start on Monday afternoon with a business forum and continue with a plenary session of the Three Seas Initiative on Tuesday.
Attending the summit is also Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović who first put forward the proposal about that informal political platform in 2015 and the platform was soon joined by the president of Poland. Today, this project, designed to develop better infrastructure connectivity between 12 countries, is perceived as a Croatian-Polish initiative.
The platform was then presented at a summit in Dubrovnik in 2016, and a summit in Warsaw in 2017, which was also attended by US President Trump, gave it the necessary political impetus. The summit in Bucharest focuses on the implementation of specific projects.
In his message, the US president said that the initiative had great potential in the area of energy, infrastructure and business cooperation as well as in terms of removing trade barriers.
The new energy infrastructure is key to closer economic integration, access to new markets and energy diversification in the region, he said, pointing to the progress made by Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Austria and Slovakia in energy diversification through the construction of gas pipelines.
The USA remains a proud partner in those efforts through the export of liquefied gas to that strategically important region and participation of US companies in the Bucharest business forum, Trump said, adding that the US delegation in Bucharest was headed by Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
The Three Seas Initiative brings together 12 countries of the Adriatic, Baltic and Black Seas – Croatia, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia and Austria.
