President Nicusor Dan said on Friday that Romania's Foreign Ministry has opened an investigation into the case of the school in Orlivka, Odesa region, where a Year 1 class taught in Romanian was closed.

Speaking at a news conference held after the Carpathian Integration Initiative 'Carpathian 8' Summit, he said that 'remarkable progress has been made in our bilateral relations regarding the Romanian minority', stressing that 'Romanian schools will remain as they are'.

'First of all, this was the year when, through an official decree in Ukraine, the Romanian language was allowed to be celebrated on August 31, as was already the case in Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Secondly, we reactivated the bilateral commission on minorities in the two countries, which resumed its work last week after a hiatus of several years. One of the main objectives of this committee is to assess the situation of schools providing education in the mother tongue. Thirdly, on the part of the Romanian authorities, scholarships for ethnic Romanians in Ukraine, which had been suspended for two or three years, have been reinstated for Romanian pupils. So, an education reform is taking shape in Ukraine - President Zelensky will provide more details about it - but we have agreed that Romanian schools will retain their current structure, while also receiving support from the Romanian state to operate under optimal conditions. As for the situation in Orlivka, this is currently the subject of an investigation by our Foreign Ministry, in cooperation with the Ukrainian Embassy in Bucharest, and we will provide you with all the details as soon as the investigation is completed,' Nicusor Dan explained.

For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that there had been 'isolated cases' of Romanian-language schools being closed, but said that such cases had been resolved. He assured that Romanian schools would not be closed.

'The decision that was adopted took into account the state of war; since the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, there have indeed been certain isolated cases, but we stopped them immediately, establishing that no institution could be closed for the duration of the state of war. Therefore, if there are any problematic issues or if you have any information to this effect, we would be grateful if you shared it with us immediately. This means that at local level there may be certain decisions that the Government, the prime minister or the Ministry of Education cannot fully control, which is understandable given the role of local authorities and local government, but the basic decision remains firm: nothing can be closed. Therefore, in any such cases, we maintain close contact through our Foreign Ministry and diplomatic missions here, so that we can effectively manage any situation,' the Ukrainian leader said. AGERPRES (RO - writing by: Florin Marin; EN - writing by: Cristina Zaharia)