French ForMin Le Drian: Corvette talks move forward; hopefully an agreement is soon reached

French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Thursday that talks between French ship builder Naval Group and the Constanta Shipyard, two industrial partners, were advancing on the construction of corvettes, adding that hopefully an agreement would be reached as soon as possible."As far as the corvettes are concerned, this is a discussion between two industrial partners. I am happy that these talks are taking place. I hope that all these talks will succeed as soon as possible and that the two companies involved will make the necessary efforts to conclude this agreement as soon as possible, which will greatly strengthen the bilateral relationship between Romania and France and will also contribute to good coordination of our navies in the Black Sea," Le Drian told a joint news conference with Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu in Bucharest.   According to Le Drian, the announced French military presence in Romania cannot be seen as a "challenge" by Russia since France doesn't do anything else but honouring its commitments."France is a nation-state, and its participation in NATO's enhanced forward presence in Romania is in line with its commitments as part of the organization. This readiness will be discussed by ministers in the coming days," Le Drian said.The French minister held a joint press conference with his Romanian counterpart, Bogdan Aurescu.Jean-Yves Le Drian said that the possible coordination with the US forces present on the Romanian territory, as announced on Wednesday, could be based on the "complementarity" principle.Asked if Russia would see France's announcement that it would send troops to Romania as a "challenge," the Paris chief diplomat said: "I don't think this can be said to be a challenge, we're just meeting our commitments with NATO."The French high official also said that "the key issue at the moment is de-escalation." He also spoke in this regard of the dialogue variant."We must make every effort to achieve this goal. And this is what we are doing for this purpose: we are deterring and trying to talk. We want to find channels of communication with Russia. It is true that this dialogue is always demanding and difficult, but we must have it in order to prevent the deterioration of the situation because it is now true that the situation is serious and that Russia has the necessary deployed forces at its disposal that it can engage in an aggressive initiative very fast if it wants. But it did not decide anything else. So we must make all efforts and take all possible initiatives to lead to de-escalation and for President Putin to prefer negotiating over confrontation," Le Drian pointed out.   French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Yves Le Drian also said on Thursday that France wants to expand the Schengen area under its current presidency of the Council of the European Union."I would like to remind you of our position, which you know very well. It is important to control our borders together. The spirit of Schengen - free movement - involves close border control, one does not go without the other and it is essential to deeply reform Schengen firstly to strengthen its governance and to ensure that control mechanisms are rigorous and strengthened in all their dimensions. That is what want to achieve this during the French Presidency, and this is where our desire to expand Schengen comes in. We know that Romania is interested in this expansion. We are in a very favorable disposition in this regard for both Romania and Bulgaria and Croatia," Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a joint conference with Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.***At the end of January, Florence Parly, the French defence minister, paid a visit to Romania. She pointed out that France supports the Romanian Army and its modernisation, mentioning the corvette file to the end.Romanian Defence Minister Vasile Dancu spoke at that time about army acquisition projects, mentioning that he hopes a quick solution would be worked out for the corvette acquisition project.