The Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday declined to comment on media reports that Romanian Minister of Finance Alexandru Nazare visited Taiwan at the end of last year.
Formosa Television (FTV) yesterday reported that Nazare had visited Taiwan to discuss establishing reciprocal representative offices and strengthening bilateral economic ties with President William Lai (賴清德).
The ministry did not comment on the report, but said it welcomed Romanian political figures’ support for deepening bilateral relations.
Photo courtesy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
In August last year, Romanian Senator and Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China co-chair Cristian Ghinea led a six-person delegation of lawmakers from Bucharest’s ruling coalition to Taipei, it said.
Following that visit, Ghinea and a number of Romanian members of parliament issued a joint statement calling for various sectors to strengthen engagement with Taiwan and expand bilateral economic and trade exchanges, the ministry said.
In 2024, Catalin-Daniel Fenechiu, chair of the Romania-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group, led a delegation to Taiwan for the inauguration of the Taiwan-the Balkans Nine Countries Parliamentary Friendship Association, it added.
Nazare has said that the two countries have great potential to collaborate in information technology, critical infrastructure and national defense, and should boost investment, local news reported.
Taiwan and Romania do not maintain formal diplomatic relations.
Romania-related affairs are handled by the Taiwan representative offices in Slovakia and Hungary, although the Taiwan Trade Center, Bucharest, was established by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council in 2005 to manage Taiwan-Romanian trade and commerce.
There are six Taiwanese businesses with facilities in Romania, dealing with computer hardware and software and resource recycling, with investment estimated at about US$224 million, FTV reported.
If negotiations run smoothly, Taiwan could open a representative office in Bucharest by the end of the year, a diplomatic source told FTV.
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
UPDATED TEST: The new rules aim to assess drivers’ awareness of risky behaviors and how they respond under certain circumstances, the Highway Bureau said Driver’s license applicants who fail to yield to pedestrians at intersections or to check blind spots, or omit pointing-and-calling procedures would fail the driving test, the Highway Bureau said yesterday. The change is set to be implemented at the end of the month, and is part of the bureau’s reform of the driving portion of the test, which has been criticized for failing to assess whether drivers can operate vehicles safely. Sedan drivers would be tested regarding yielding to pedestrians and turning their heads to check blind spots, while drivers of large vehicles would be tested on their familiarity with pointing-and-calling