Romania starts preparing for taking over the EU Council presidency

Romania will have to spend "tens of millions of euros" to ensure the EU Council presidency in 2019, Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos said on Monday.

"By our calculations, we’re talking about a cost of tens of millions of euros for preparing and running the EU Council presidency. This is the money that will also contribute to promoting Romania’s image, money that should enable us also to prepare the administrative, logistical part," Ciolos said, according to local Agerpres.

He added that the future Government will decide if the informal Councils will be held in Bucharest or other cities. The informal Councils bring hundreds of officials from EU member states to the country that holds the EU Council presidency and are a good opportunity to promote the host-country.

Holding Council meetings in other cities than Bucharest would require additional logistic and organizing costs but would also allow Romania to promote other cities and regions than the capital, according to Ciolos.

The presidency of the EU Council rotates among the EU member states every six months. Slovakia is currently ensuring the Council’s presidency, its term ending on December 31, 2016.

The Romanian presidency will start on January 1 and will end on June 30, 2019. Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos said his cabinet has almost finalized a master-plan of priority actions to be taken for the administrative and technical preparation of the Romanian presidency of the EU Council. He added that two and a half years is not a long period to prepare this event.

Ciolos also said that the Government has already started evaluating the human resources available in public administration to select those people that are trained well enough to coordinate the project, who will form what he called the "elite corps" of Romanian administration. This group will have to manage a few thousands of meetings of working groups and special committees.

Irina Popescu, [email protected]