2nd February 2013
Last Saturday some 170 people gathered at the Athenee Palace Hotel in Bucharest for Burns Night – an annual celebration for the Scottish community. Born on 25th January 1759, Robert Burns is Scotland’s national poet as well as a pioneer of the Romantic movement. Burns suppers are organised each year on or around the poet’s […]
1st February 2013
There are two fundamental planks of reform in Romania, on which the Romanian authorities are engaged in commitments to the International Financial Institutions and to their EU partners – the Stand-By Agreement with the IMF (plus the World Bank and EU) and the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism for tackling corruption and judicial reform with the […]
31st January 2013
Last week we hosted a seminar in Bucharest on social media for colleagues from Embassies across the region and London. The aim was to learn, discuss and share experience about the new opportunities and challenges that social media like Facebook and Twitter, blogging and YouTube, present for our work. This is a new and unfamiliar […]
19th January 2013
The Foreign Office’s Minister Alistair Burt called Romanian Foreign Minister Titus Corlatean earlier this evening to express the British Government’s sincere condolences on the death of a Romanian citizen who was confirmed among the casualties of the terrorist attack in Algeria. I would like to add my own heartfelt condolences to his family and to […]
15th January 2013
Today I marked Mihai Eminescu’s birthday, Romania’s national poet, by reading one of his iconic poems and talking about Romania’s national heritage and the embassy’s ‘green agenda’. You can read more about Eminescu here.
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15th January 2013
Ianuarie este o lună a marilor scriitori în Romania și în Marea Britanie. Pe 25 ianuarie, marcăm în Marea Britanie ziua de naștere a lui Robert Burns, poetul național al Scoției, iar pe 15 ianuarie marcăm ziua lui Mihai Eminescu. Cu această ocazie aș dori să vă citesc o poezie de Mihai Eminescu. Am ales, […]
27th December 2012
Shortly after the Romanian Government presented its programme I tweeted on @HMAMartinHarris my pick of the top five priorities to be taken forward in 2013. In five tweets: 1. Implementing the IMF agreement. RO has done well on fiscal consolidation. Now it’s time to progress on structural reforms and tax evasion. 2. Judicial reform. Implementing […]
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27th November 2012
On Tuesday last week I gave up my seat as Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Romania to Nicoleta Ghita, a very confident and capable young lady from Sector 5 in Bucharest. This was part of Child Takeover Day – an initiative that started in the UK and has been brought to Romania for the first time […]
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26th November 2012
I gave a lecture to a very engaged and smart group of students at the Institute for International Relations at Cluj University on Wednesday last week. You can find the text here. It draws on my experience working in countries in transition over the last twenty years, and draws the conclusion that the concept of […]
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25th October 2012
Across Europe, from Romania to the UK – more specifically from Sighisoara to Shropshire – there is a fraternity between the fire services of our different countries. On Saturday I was privileged to attend a ceremony to hand over three fire engines donated by the people of Shropshire for use in Mures and Brasov counties […]