New Romanian consulate in Catania to open in coming weeks

'The Catania Consulate is at the phase of completion. The Foreign Ministry found and already rented a proper location for the conduct of the consular activity. Also, the specialised staff has been named and posted to a permanent mission. The Consulate has a five-position roster', Mircea announced.

The new Consulate will serve the nearly 80,000 Romanians alleged to live in Sicily at present, according to unofficial figures. The Foreign Ministry decided to set it up in order to ease the burden from the Consular Department of the Romanian Embassy in Rome and to take over part of the requests put forward by the Romanians based in southern Italy, who have so far been forced to travel all the way to Rome to resolve their consular-related matters.

The Romanian consulates currently working with the public in Italy are based in: Bologna (for the regions Emilia Romagna, Tuscany and Marche), Milan (for Lombardy and Trentino Alto Adige), Rome (for Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Lazio, Molise, Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily and Umbria), Turin (Piemonte, Liguria) and Trieste (Veneto, Friuli-Venezia Giulia).