Image credit: M Brice/CERN.
Romania has become the 22nd Member State of CERN, having acceded to the Organization’s founding convention, which is deposited with UNESCO, on 17 July. The accession crowns a period of co-operation that stretches back 25 years. “This is a very special moment for Romania and its relationship with CERN,” says ambassador Adrian Vierita, Romania’s permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva.
Bilateral discussions between the Romanian government and CERN began in 1991. Aspiring to become a Member State and therefore to contribute fully to the governance of the laboratory, Romania submitted its formal application to join CERN in April 2008.
Today, Romania has around 100 visiting scientists at CERN and a particularly strong presence in the LHC experiments ATLAS, ALICE and LHCb, in addition to the DIRAC, n_TOF and NA62 experiments. “The accession of Romania to full CERN membership underlines the importance of European research collaboration in the quest to understand nature at its most fundamental level,” says the president of CERN Council, Sijbrand de Jong. “United, we can do so much more than as individual countries.” The Romanian flag will be raised alongside 21 others at the CERN entrance on 5 September.
