December 21, 2015
Romanian Parliament holds solemn meeting./ Slovenians say NO to gay marriage.
Newsroom, 21.12.2015, 12:00
The Romanian Parliament is today holding a solemn meeting to mark 26 years since the anti-communist Revolution of 1989. This meeting is held every year in the month of December to honour the memory of the Revolution’s heroes. Over 1,000 people were killed and almost 3,400 were injured between December 16 and 25, 1989. Romania was the only country of the Eastern Bloc where the change of regime was made in a violent manner.
The Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu is today meeting in Bucharest with his Polish counterpart, Witold Waszczykowski. The two officials will tackle the stage of the Romanian-Polish relations and their perspective, as well as topical issues on the European and international agenda. Comanescu and Waszczykowski will sign a new Romanian-Polish action plan for the period 2016-2020 included in the Bilateral Strategic Partnership.
Spain’s outgoing Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has the difficult task of forming a new government following the general election held on Sunday, France Press reports. Despite garnering most of the votes, the People’s Party (PP) lost the majority in Parliament and must now try to form a coalition. Official results showed the PP obtained 123 seats in Parliament (with almost 29% of the votes), the Socialist Party got 90 seats (22% of the votes), the anti-austerity Podemos got 69 seats (20.6% of the votes) and the centrist Ciudadanos (Citizens) won 40 seats (14% of the votes). The Spanish general election takes place after four years of conservative governing which took the country out of the crisis at the cost of painful austerity measures. The result of the election will also affect the 700 thousand Romanians living in Spain, the largest foreign community in this country.
The Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos is today meeting in Bucharest with the US Ambassador to Romania, Hans Klemm. The latter has recently stated that his country will continue to be a staunch ally, partner and friend of Romania. Hans Klemm was appointed US Ambassador to Romania in March 2015.
In the Republic of Moldova, a former Soviet republic with a majority Romanian-speaking population, President Nicolae Timofti is today nominating a candidate for the position of prime minister. On Friday, President Timofti had a meeting with representatives of the pro-European parliamentary parties but they could not reach an agreement on this matter, given that both the Liberal Democratic Party and the Democratic Party want a prime minister from their own party. The former cabinet, headed by Valeriu Strelet, was dismissed at the end of October following a no-confidence motion tabled by the Socialists and Comunists from the pro-Russian opposition, suported by the Democrats who, at the time, were part of the government coalition. According to the Moldovan Constitution, Parliament must endorse the new Cabinet by end-January 2016, or call early elections.
On Sunday, Slovenia rejected with over 60% of the votes a law that would give same-sex couples the right to marry. Slovenia is the first country of the former communist bloc that passed a law, in March 2015, giving same-sex couples the right to marry and adopt children. However, these measures have not been enforced because a civil society group called For Children appealed to the top Court, calling for a referendum. A few days before the referendum, Pope Francis urged Slovenians “to support the family, a structural reference point for the life of society,” and asked them to say NO to gay marriage.
(Translated by Elena Enache)
