The European Institute of Romania (EIR) organized on Friday, December 9, 2022, the conference on the topic “Enhancing the resilience of the European Union: Food Security, Interconnectivity and Climate Change” (online, via Zoom).
EIR’s traditional event, the annual conference was organized with the support of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and aimed to identify the opportunities and challenges that the European Union and Romania are facing in the current context. Resilience is not only the ability to withstand and cope with challenges but also to achieve transitions in a sustainable, equitable, and democratic way. Considering the need for coordination and solidarity at the EU`s level, proposals for innovative measures and solutions for the three directions of action, namely food security, interconnectivity, and climate change, were topics of the debate.
During the conference, the participants highlighted a series of relevant aspects, among which we mention:
- Resilience has become an essential pillar of strategic development at the European level; the pandemic and the unprovoked, unjustified, and illegal war of aggression on the Eastern border of the European Union brought to the fore health, European security, and neighborhood, as new dimensions of the concept; resilience ensures a close link between European security and defense, energy, food and digital security and climate change.
- Progress in the resilience field supports the search for sustainable solutions, adapting the answers to the main challenges and coordination with strategic partners, strengthening Euro-Atlantic unity.
- The crisis must not lead to a relaxation of the EU’s development objectives, especially those regarding the green transition; it merges all the crises we face; reforms must be continued democratically and fairly, and challenges must be anticipated and turned into opportunities, better preparing the EU for the future.
- The best resilience strategy is shaped by good governance; fragile states create fragile citizens and vice versa.
- In its 23 years of activity, the European Institute of Romania has contributed to the Europeanization of the public sphere, in the public discourse being introduced arguments, facts, and ideas relevant to Romania’s European course.