By joining the EU, Romania has become a Member State with equal rights and holds the 7th place when it comes to the number of votes (namely 14).
In order to fulfill the commitments in the environmental sector which Romania must accomplish as a Member State, the Department for European Affairs and Programmes Funded by EU from the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MEF) represents the interface between the Ministry and the national authorities coordinating the European affairs (Department for European Affairs and Ministry of Foreign Affairs) by:
managing the tasks of MEF from the programmatic official documents and from the official documents of reporting to the European institutions;
coordinating the participation of Romania in the activities related to environment protection within the Council of the EU;
overseeing the manner in which the transposition deadlines for the environmental acquis are followed as well as the reporting deadlines to the European Commission or to the European Environment Agency;
coordinating the exchange of information on the strategies, policies and european laws on the environment which are being elaborated by the competent national institutions and Romania’s Permanent Representation at the EU;
preparing, together with the technical directorates within the Ministry, the instructions and the general mandates for the negociations of environmental issues, irrespective of the level of representation;
coordinating, together with the technical directorates within the Ministry, the reporting to the Department for European Affairs of national laws transposing the EU directives within the notification process and of laws which regulate the same field as the directive which is being transposed.