January 18, 2024

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 18.01.2024, 13:57

INFLATION – Romania is among the European Union countries with the highest inflation rate in December 2023, according to data published by Eurostat. At EU level, the average inflation rate last December was 3.4%, up from 3.1% in the previous month. The EU member countries with the highest inflation rates were the Czech Republic – 7.6%, Romania – 7%, and Slovakia – 6.6%. At the opposite pole, the lowest inflation rates were reported in Denmark – 0.4%, Italy and Belgium – both with 0.5%. Compared to November 2023, the annual inflation rate went down in 15 member states, remained stable in Spain and increased in 11 countries.

DECISIONS – The Romanian Government is to pass, in todays meeting, a first set of measures agreed on by transporters and farmers with the ministries of transport and agriculture. The government said that draft emergency orders are being prepared to meet the transporters’ demands. Also, another emergency order will establish some temporary support measures, intended for agricultural producers, to help them cope with the effects of last years drought. Moreover, agriculture minister Florin Barbu, has invited farmers to hold more talks, as the latter consider themselves not represented by the associations that have taken part in negotiations so far. ​

AGRICULTURE – In Strasbourg, MEPs from all parliamentary groups discussed the problems faced by farmers in many countries of the EU bloc. Liberal MEP Daniel Buda emphasized the fact that EU farmers are affected by inflation, drought, floods and by the war in Ukraine and they need new financial allocations. Social Democrat MEP Victor Negrescu emphasized the fact that farmers in Romania and all over Europe need support and requested a more active involvement of the European commissioner, in this respect. MEP Dacian Cioloş from the RENEW group said that the demands of farmers and transporters, who are protesting in Romania and throughout the European Union, are justified, whether they are related to national or European decisions. He criticized the European Commission for inaction.

DEFICIT- Romanias budget deficit in 2024 will be around 5% of the Gross Domestic Product, Finance Minister Marcel Boloş said. He explained that Romania is among the countries that have quite high deficits and that ten countries, including Poland and France, will enter the excessive deficit procedure. Boloş specified that, in this context, the Bucharest Government must continue to apply the fiscal-budgetary measures, the projects related to digitization, better collection and combating tax evasion. The Romanian official said, at the same time, that all these measures are in accordance with the budgetary rules imposed at EU level. Since 2020, Romania has been under excessive deficit procedure.

BRUSSELS – The European Commission has announced that it will start analyzing, in detail, the legislation of Ukraine and Moldova, the first step in the two countries’ EU accession. In parallel, however, the Commission still analyzes the two countries’ compliance with what the European Union requested of them, as a preliminary condition. Also, the Commission is working on the negotiation framework for the two states, a document that will be submitted to the EU Council for approval, at the next European summi. The decision to launch this process was taken by the European Council in December 2023.

PROGRAM – The budget proposed by the Romanian Environment Ministry for the stove scrapping pilot program is 500 million lei (around 1 hundred million euros), and funding is granted for devices with a minimum efficiency of 80% and low pollutant emissions, Minister Mircea Fechet told Radio Romania. He previously promised that the “Green Photovoltaic House” program would have a budget of 2 billion lei for this year. (EE)