Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă made an unscheduled visit to Israel during which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked her to move the Romanian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Unusually, the Romanian Prime Minister’s office only announced the visit after the meeting ended but the short press release only spoke about the good relationship of the two countries and the preparations for a joint Romanian-Israeli cabinet meeting due in the first half of the year.
The issue of the location of the Romanian embassy to Israel caused a political storm in Romania last April, when it was revealed that the government adopted a secret memo about the cabinet’s intention to move the embassy to Jerusalem. At the time, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis – who under the Romanian constitution has a wide range of foreign policy mandates – called for the resignation of Dăncilă.
“Mrs. Dancila is not up to the job of prime minister of Romania and as a result the government is becoming a liability for Romania. That is why I am publicly calling for Mrs. Dancila’s resignation,” Iohannis said in a statement at the time. “This was a major error, because in foreign policy, if we’re talking about secret documents, the president should have been consulted.
Title image: Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Source: gov.ro)
