The escalating crisis in Venezuela will top the agenda at talks in Bucharest on Thursday and Friday attended by Italy's foreign minister Moavero Milanesi and his European Union counterparts, the foreign ministry said in a statement.
"It should be remembered that European Union states signed a joint declaration on 26 January," said the statement, referring to an ultimatum the bloc gave Venezuela's leftist president Nicolas Maduro warning it would recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as president if Maduro failed to call an election soon.
During the talks in the Romanian capital, Moaverao and the other EU foreign ministers will also discuss the Middle East, China and the EU's 'Eastern Partnership' (with the post-Soviet states of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine), the statement said.
Bilateral meetings between Moavero and the foreign minster of Cyprus, Nikos Christodoulides, French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Macedonia's foreign minister Nikola Dimitrov and Spain's foreign minister Josep Borrell will also take place on the sidelines of the talks, according to the statement.
Foreign ministers from EU candidate countries will also join Moavero and his colleagues for one of the meeting's plenary sessions, the statement noted. The five countries are Turkey, Albania, Serbia, Montenegro and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia.
Romania holds the rotating EU presidency for the first six months of this year (from January to June).
