9th June 2011 London, UK
This week I made my first visit to Sarajevo, where I met members of the Presidency, the Speaker and members of Parliament as well as young people involved in the arts, business and civil society. I was there to underline our concern at the lack of political progress since the general elections last year. We […]
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9th June 2011
…is the slogan of the Asia-Europe meeting (ASEM) now taking place in Godolo Royal Palace. Minister of State Jeremy Browne is representing the UK and has spoken about live foreign policy issues (the Arab Spring, Iran, Afghanistan, Burma and North Korea) and global economic developments (the rising significance of Asian economies to global prosperity, reform […]
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4th June 2011
On 31 May the British Embassy’s conference hall was (not for the first time) turned into a cinema. I co-hosted the evening screening of the film “Call of Life: Facing Mass Extinction” with the Hungarian State Secretary for the Environment, Zoltan Illes. This was far from the first time we worked together. The history of […]
3rd June 2011
The teenager is lying motionless in the road. The driver of the black Porsche Cayenne stands over him, horrified. A couple of passers-by are on their mobile phones, perhaps calling the police or an ambulance. I saw this scene recently in Kyiv on Ivana Mazepu Street, down which I walk and drive regularly. Although the […]
1st June 2011
President Basescu will visit London next week for talks with David Cameron. High on their agenda will be economic growth [*ro, PDF brochure 871 KB, new window]. This question is now urgent. Both our countries are emerging from recession, but the recovery is slow. Growth is forecast to be around 1.7% in the UK this […]
17th May 2011
Foreign Minister Baconschi’s visit to London yesterday marks a new step in Romania’s relations with the United Kingdom. As he said in his press conference with his counterpart William Hague, we are building on the strategic partnership created between both countries in 2003. But the context today is quite different from eight years ago. The […]
6th April 2011
Romania and the UK find themselves in similar economic circumstances. We are emerging from the economic crisis, we have had to bear down hard on public spending, and we need to find new sources of growth to sustain our economies in the decade ahead. This is true for many countries in Europe. And the need […]
30th March 2011
I’ve been in Warsaw this week meeting Polish and British colleagues and having my first good look around the city since I first visited it in 1987. It’s always interesting to compare neighbours, and the comparison between Poland and Ukraine tells us a good bit about both. This is particularly relevant as the negotiations on the proposed […]
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29th March 2011
On Tuesday 15 March, Professor Dan Hamilton of Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Transatlantic Relations in DC hosted a panel discussion to launch "Europe 2020 – Competitive or Complacent". Professor Hamilton warned that 2020 was the closing window for Europe within which it needed to position itself into a competitive place in an increasingly inter-connected […]
28th March 2011 Bucharest, Romania
I chose to dedicate my first “corporate” blog entry to the Embassy green work as the subject is so closed to my heart – my academic background is a combination of Journalism and Chemical Engineering, and so I have been an avid supporter of environmental protection. It is an impressive accomplishment to see how Romania […]
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