Mircea Geoana: NATO and EU integration, as important as Great Union to Romania

NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana said on Friday in Cluj that Romania's integration into NATO and the EU are as important historical moments as the Great Union and the Little Union.

"For Romania, NATO integration ends only in 2022. We joined in 2004, but from a military and security point of view, Romania will have, due to the fact that Russia is an unpredictable and aggressive actor, the same quality of national security as Germany or Belgium. We have no difference between what NATO has on the eastern flank and what NATO already has in Western Europe, which is a fundamental change. (...) Romania's natural family is in NATO and the EU (...), it is our home. (...) Our integration into NATO and the EU is - and will be in the history book - a moment as important as the Great Union or the Little Union, because it is in fact a change of paradigm, for the first time, Romania has the entire democratic West as its ally and partner," said Mircea Geona, at a debate organised by Babes-Bolyai University (UBB).

At the same debate, he said that the world, humanity, is undergoing unprecedented transformations.

"We are witnessing one of the greatest transformations of human society in the history of our species. We have never had so many cumulative, structural factors. (...) We have a certain crisis of democracy and the capitalist model that Europe [has had], for five centuries, and even Romania, maybe not always as organically, but who has been a part of it in a kind of domination of Europe in terms of ideas and values; democracy was born here, the ideas of modern capitalism were born here and in the Western democratic world there is a great deal of conversation right now about the need to refresh our democracy, because it's a project that is not static, it's very dynamic, and like anything else where you don't invest energy, love and attention, it risks remaining behind the expectations of the public opinion. At the economic level, in addition to the great technological revolution, we have a strong conversation about the type of capitalism or the types of capitalism, because it is not a single one, because the economic model must also be rethought," argued Mircea Geoana.

On Friday, UBB and the Aspen Romania Institute organised a debate on "The Role of NATO and the European Union in Romania's Modernisation," which was attended by NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Geoana and UBB Rector, Professor Dr. Daniel David. AGERPRES