Von der Leyen sets off on a Black Sea tour, starting in Bucharest

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, will visit Bucharest on Monday, November 9, where she will hold talks with President Nicușor Dan and Prime Minister Luca Niculescu. According to the announcement of the presidential office, Nicușor Dan will receive her at the Cotroceni Palace at half past three in the afternoon, while the visit was announced by the Commission's spokesperson at Friday's briefing as the first stop of a Black Sea tour. On Tuesday, von der Leyen will meet Prime Minister Rumen Radev in Varna, Bulgaria, and will also visit the naval academy; on Wednesday she will attend the COP31 climate conference in Antalya, Turkey; and on Thursday she will take part in the meeting of the European People's Party's political committee in Dublin, followed by an informal meeting of the members of the European Council in the same city. Neither the Commission nor the presidential office has disclosed the topics of the visit.

The Bucharest and Varna stops draw attention to security in the Black Sea, where drones have sunk several commercial vessels near the Romanian and Bulgarian coasts in recent weeks. At its meeting on October 22, the Supreme Defense Council, through Bucharest's presidential office, clearly attributed these incidents to Russian aggression, and named the swift launch of the Black Sea security center—planned as part of the European Union's Black Sea strategy—as one of Romania's key goals. According to Reuters, Nicușor Dan had already indicated to von der Leyen at an earlier meeting that Romania would be happy to host the center, which would gather information from several countries and monitor the region more closely. The Commission president also visited Romania at the beginning of September last year, when she toured the member states bordering Russia and lying along the front line, telling Romanian soldiers that they help defend Europe in the airspace and waters above the Black Sea. The current visit will also be her first meeting with the head of the Niculescu government, which took office earlier this month, at a time when a ruling by Romania's Constitutional Court has jeopardized the decree implementing the EU's SAFE defense loan program.

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