THE WEEK IN REVIEW

January 29 - February 4, 2024

Bogdan Matei, 03.02.2024, 14:00

Deficit for the country

Romania ended the year
2023 with a budget deficit of 5.68% of the GDP, more than one percentage point above the figure
considered when building the budget at the beginning of last year, which was 4.4%
– the Finance Ministry announced on Wednesday. The good news is that the
deficit of 5.68% in 2023 is still below that anticipated by the European
Commission in its autumn forecast, i.e. 6.3%. The difference between expenses
and revenues stood at roughly 90 billion lei, the equivalent of 18 billion
Euros.

Romanian MPs at Work

After more than one-month
holiday, the Romanian senators and deputies kicked off a new Parliament session
on February 1st. Measures aimed at limiting gambling and keeping
drug use at bay, as well as the bills
needed to reach the milestones in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, so
that Romania can submit payment requests to receive the allocated European
funds are high on the agenda of the PSD-PNL ruling coalition. The opposition USR & AUR have pledged to stall any
further tax hikes and prevent the Socialists and Liberals from violating the
Constitution, as the latter enjoy a comfortable majority in Parliament. The
press in Bucharest is bracing up for a session fraught with heated debates in a
year when Romania is going to have all types of elections, European Parliament,
local, legislative and presidential.

Hackers for the Prime
Minister

The Romanian government
has amended through an emergency ordinance the cyber-security law so that state
institutions may be informed in 48 hours on any security breach in the IT
infrastructures of Romania’s state entities enabling them to have a rapid
response. The amendments came after the cyber-attacks against the websites of
the National Directorate for Cyber-Security and the Chamber of Deputies. The
Minister of Research and Digitization, Social-Democrat Bogdan Ivan, says that
the cyber-attack on the Directorate failed whereas 300 files of public
documents have been stolen from the Chamber of Deputies, as well as classified
data, such as copies of the IDs belonging to Romanian MPs. Among the stolen
documents is the ID of Romania’s Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who now needs
to get another ID card.

Another Romanian
politician gets bribe

Anti-corruption
prosecutors on Thursday carried out searches at the house of the president of
Prahova County Council, (southern Romania), Liberal Iulian Dumitrescu and
members of his family. On a 60-day pretrial conditional release, the politician
and several other persons are suspected of bribery and misrepresentation.
Dumitrescu says he doesn’t have anything to conceal and can produce any
documents needed in the investigation. He has also announced his intention to step
down from all the positions he holds in the party so as not to affect the
Liberals’ image. Dumitrescu was one of the four prime vice-presidents of the National
Liberal Party, part of the ruling coalition with the Social Democrats. He was
also head of the party’s county branch.