The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Romania will facilitate the procedure of gaining the Romanian citizenship by amending the legal procedure. The amendment will be introduced in the first moths of this year, the Romanian minister of Foreign Affairs, Mihai Razavan Ungureanu said in an interview with “Vocea Basarabiei” radio, quoted by Info-Prim Neo. According to the minister, after Romania joined the European Union, the number of requests for gaining Romanian citizenship will increase, that is why MFA has to ease the procedure on regaining the citizenship. About 400 thousand requests came from the Moldovan citizens from 1992 to 2006, 97,242 of them being satisfied. “The term that elapses from submitting the request and receiving the answer is unjustifiably long, so that we will correct these mistakes in the first month of 2007. We have the full support of the Ministry of Justice and also of President Traian Basescu”, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu stated. Referring to the complicated procedure of obtaining Romanian visas, the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs said that he expects more efficiency and positive political thinking from the central Moldovan administration in order to help the Moldovan citizens in this respect. The minister is puzzled by the fact that a clear answer was not given yet by the Moldovan authorities as regards the opening of the two consulates in Balti and Cahul, which would facilitate the process. He affirms that he has repeatedly asked his Moldova counterpart Andrei Stratan and other statesmen to open the consulates but no answer was given by the Moldovan authorities. The Romanian minister considers this situation strange, if taking into consideration the considerable public pressure. The Romanian Embassy in Chisinau has only six desks whilst Ukraine has 2 consulates in Moldova. Mihai Razvan Ungureanu is puzzled by the fact that the Chisinau City Halls delays offering another building for the consulate so it would be more efficient. “If such a situation would have occurred in Romania, the newspapers would have “rumbled”, and the civil society would have criticised the authorities”, the Romanian Minister of Foreign Affairs considers.