Over 60 heads of state and government participate at Francophony Summit in Bucharest

Over 60 heads of state and government participate at the Francophony Summit, the opening ceremony of which took place in Bucharest, on Saturday, September 28. The summit is for the first time organized in Europe, in other country than France. The 9th Conference of Francophony gathers in Bucharest, together with heads of state and Government, the national delegation of these countries and also 800 journalists. The meetings of those approximately two thousand participants will take place at the Palace of the Parliament in 30 rooms. Over 17 000 persons from SPP are involved in the organization of this event and 3500 employees of the Ministry of Administration and Internal Affairs, personnel from emergency, medical services in the hotels where the guests will be accommodated. According to the protocol, the heads of state and government will be accommodated in 5 stars hotels and the expenses for accommodation and meal, amounting to EUR 350 000 will be paid by the Romanian side. According to a press release of the Parliament, the speaker Marian Lupu, who will deliver a speech and the MP Ion Varta participate at the reunion. Romanian press writes that an unannounced and surprising absence is the one of Moldova’s president, Vladimir Voronin. Although initially he let understand that he would participate at the event, Voronin preffered that Moldova is represented by a secondary level, by the speaker of the Parliament. The president of the Republic of Moldova did not express his availability to participate in the event, according to the press service of the Presidency, the press from Bucharest writes. The head of the Romanian diplomacy, Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, refused to comment the absence of his Moldovan counterpart and his reasons saying that he can not speak in the name of the Moldovan delegation. Previously, Florent Parmentier, co-director of the Moldovan Association in France declared that taking in the Francophony Summit in Bucharest is a success for Romania. The Francophony Summit in Chisinau planned for 2012 could be a significant progress for the European objective of Moldova, with the only condition that it will open new perspectives for the development of francophony in the Region, the cited source says. The first initiatives linked to creating an international community of francophony were registered in the period during 60s and 70s. The Cultural and Technical Cooperation Agency, with the headquarters in Paris, was the first collaboration institution between French speaking countries, being founded on March 20, 1970, date when the International Day of Francophony was instituted. The present name of the French speaking community - International Organization of Francophony (OIF) – was adopted at the 12th session of the Ministerial Conference organized in Bucharest in 1998. 53 countries are members of OIF and another 10 are observers.