Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova had a meeting with Prime Minister of Romania Ion-Marcel Ciolacu who greeted her cordially and remembered his own visit to Azerbaijan, sharing then the kindly recollections of the conversation he had had with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan then.

Referring to the advance of the strategic relationship between Azerbaijan and Romania and saying that the two states were not only partners but also friends, Mr Ciolacu remembered that Romania was the second in the world after Türkiye to recognise Azerbaijan’s national independence. Moreover, Romania was the first EU member to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Azerbaijan and, on the other hand, our country was Romania’s first trade partner in the South Caucasus. Having said all that, Mr Ciolacu mentioned the presence of a considerable potential to further the growth of the bilateral economic ties.

The considerable role of Azerbaijan in maintaining the energy security of the EU was brought up as well. The Romanian PM reminisced about the discussion of the South Gas Corridor with our European partners, adding then that Azerbaijan also had a major role in transport connectivity. There are fine opportunities to strengthen interaction in building up transport links between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, according to the Romanian PM who stressed the importance of green energy projects. Europe is seriously in need of green energy and there is a question of exporting that energy from Azerbaijan, according to PM Ciolacu.

Thanking for the hospitality extended to the parliamentary delegation of Azerbaijan and the kind words spoken of our country, Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova mentioned the evolution of the Azerbaijani-Romanian relations from a friendship to a strategic partnership.

Speaker Sahiba Gafarova also remembered the visit of Ion-Marcel Ciolacu, then President of the Chamber of Deputies of the Romanian Parliament, to Azerbaijan and the conversation the two of them had in February this year.

As she spoke of the exceptional role of reciprocal visits and discussions of the two Heads of State in the progress of the two-way relations, the Chair of the Milli Majlis touched on the visits of the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to Romania and of the Romanian Presidents to Azerbaijan. Those visits are indicative of an active political dialogue apace between our countries, in the opinion of Mrs Gafarova.

The head of the Azerbaijani legislature said then that the two countries had a substantial enough contractual and treaty framework formed between them, what with 61 documents inked to date. The economic and energy connexions are at a sound level whilst the volume of trade is growing. Alongside this, there is a remarkable potential to broaden interaction in various areas, too. Sahiba Gafarova expressed a confidence that the efficient work done by the Joint Commission on Trade and Economic Connexions & Scientific Engineering Co-operation was going to make it possible to put on yet more diverse areas of interaction.

The energy sector was also broached during the conversation as one of the chief areas of bilateral co-operation, with Sahiba Gafarova mentioning new prospects in the energy security field, including those for building up interaction in the already-said green energy sector.

The Chair of the Milli Majlis invited Romanian companies to join projects under way in Garabagh as she was informing Mr Ciolacu of investment opportunities in various areas in Azerbaijan and of the large-scale work being done to restore our lands wrested from the occupiers.

Our parliaments occupy a special place in the system of inter-state relations, according to the Speaker of the Milli Majlis who expressed her satisfaction with the fruitful inter-legislature co-operation and said that the past period had seen mutual visits of Heads of Parliament and between the friendship groups alike. Mrs Gafarova underlined the significance of those trips as well as of the work done by the friendship groups at that.

The resolutions of the UN Security Council and other international organisations demanding that our territories be cleared of the Armenian occupation had remained on paper for nigh on thirty years until Azerbaijan enforced them and freed her own lands single-handedly in 2020. It had been for close to thirty years that Azerbaijan had waited for justice to be restored and the requirements of those international documents to be fulfilled, Mrs Gafarova told Mr Ciolacu. But the double standards present in the system of international relations had made certain that not only had the occupation stopped but we had witnessed steps taken in support of the occupier and an occupier policy. Azerbaijan restored justice herself ultimately. Paradoxically enough, however, today certain circles are making biased statements about Azerbaijan over Azerbaijan’s having restored her territorial integrity and sovereignty, both recognised and affirmed by international law, according to Sahiba Gafarova.

Further, Mr Ciolacu was made aware of the current restoration and revival of the de-occupied Azerbaijani provinces and the process of bringing the erstwhile IDP back to their native parts. Azerbaijan invited Armenia to sign a peace pact that would be based on the five staple principles of international law but Armenia has spent the three years past demonstrating an unhelpful stance and resorting to all sorts of military and political provocations. Besides, Sahiba Gafarova told Ion-Marcel Ciolacu of the local anti-terrorist measures of Azerbaijan, their results and the work being done towards the reintegration of the residents of Garabagh of Armenian extraction.

Prime Minister Ion-Marcel Ciolacu said that Romania had always supported and was supporting the territorial integrity of Azerbaijan and that he hoped that a peace treaty would be signed between Azerbaijan and Armenia soon enough.

Other matters of shared interest were tabled, too, as the conversation went on.

The Press and Public Relations Department
The Milli Majlis