Dăncilă's statement is likely to trigger a backlash as it breaks with the EU's position that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory occupied by Israel | Daniel Mihailescu/AFP via Getty Images Romania to move Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem The announcement breaks with the EU position.

Romania will move its Israeli Embassy to Jerusalem, Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă said Sunday during a visit to Washington.

Speaking at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobby group, Dăncilă said the government has completed an assessment "evaluating the opportunity" to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, which resulted in "full consensus" for the decision.

"I, as prime minister of Romania, and the government that I run, will move our embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel," she said, according to the Times of Israel.

The announcement is likely to trigger a backlash as it breaks with the EU's position that East Jerusalem is Palestinian territory occupied by Israel.

It comes as Bucharest's relationship with the EU has become strained. Romania, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU, has been clashing with Brussels over the rule of law, and key officials from the ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) have been embracing growing Euroskeptic rhetoric.

The leader of PSD, Liviu Dragnea, first suggested the embassy move in December 2017, a day after the United Nations General Assembly backed a resolution calling on countries to refrain from establishing diplomatic missions in Jerusalem. The U.N. resolution was an indirect condemnation of U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Dragnea and Romanian President Klaus Iohannis have been at loggerheads over the issue, with Iohannis complaining in April last year that he had not been consulted before the government adopted a resolution to start the process.

Iohannis said Romania would be breaking international law if it went ahead with the move and argued that the final decision rests with the president.

Dăncilă also told her audience in Washington that the Romanian parliament will work on three new laws in the next days: granting Romanian citizenship to all Romanian Jews who were forced to renounce it when they left the country under the communist regime; granting compensation and special pensions for Holocaust survivors in Romania; and granting access to state archives to specialists from the Federation of Jewish Community in Romania.