4 May, 2016 UPDATE

A round-up of local and international news

Newsroom, 04.05.2016, 12:15

Romania’s new
culture minister Corina Suteu was sworn in on Wednesday before president Klaus
Iohannis. The president said reforms are needed in the area of culture and that
the situation at the National Opera in Bucharest must be solved. Corina Suteu
replaces Vlad Alexandrescu, who was asked by the prime minister to resign over
his handling of the scandal at the Bucharest Opera, where 3 directors were
appointed and then replaced within a month. Corina Suteu has been serving as a
state secretary in the ministry of culture, having previously run the New York
branch of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Romanian prosecutors have started a crimination prosecution for foiling
disease control and substituting food and other products in the disinfectant
scandal that involves a local manufacturer whose products are used in
hospitals. The health ministry in Bucharest has made public its preliminary
results after testing the quality of the disinfectants used in hospitals.
According to the health minister Patriciu Achimas Cadariu, less than 5% of the
over 3,500 samples collected from hospitals are non-compliant. The scandal
erupted when a journalistic investigation revealed the concentration of the
disinfectants delivered to hospitals was 10 times below the permissible level.

The
European Commission on Wednesday proposed to the European Parliament to lift
visas for citizens of Turkey travelling to the European Union for short stays.
The proposal could be implemented in June if approved by the European
Parliament and EU member states. Turkish authorities have insisted on visa
liberalisation as a condition for the implementation of the EU-Turkey migration
deal signed on the 18th of March. The vice-president of the European
Commission Frans Timmermans said on Wednesday that Turkey had yet to meet five
of the required 72 conditions for visa-free travel. He said the Commission also
proposed the inclusion of a mechanism that would allow EU states to re-impose
visa requirements if there were problems.

The European Commission on Wednesday proposed a reform of the so-called
Dublin System of EU asylum rules to ensure a fair distribution of asylum
seekers across the European Union. Member states who refuse to share the burden
face a fine of 250,000 euros per person. Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have
criticised the changes proposed by the Commission. Also on Wednesday, the
European Commission proposed the 6-month extension of internal border controls
in the case of five Schengen countries, Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and
Norway. The measure is to be approved by all 28 EU member states. Last year,
several states reintroduced internal border controls to cope with
extra-community migration.

Unless a ceasefire is agreed in Aleppo, as many
as 400,000 people could head for the Turkish border, warned the US envoy for
Syria, Staffan de Mistura, who met the German and
French foreign ministers in Berlin. More than 284 people have been killed in Aleppo,
Syria’s second largest city, since clashes resumed on the 22nd of
April between the rebels and the government troops.

Two Romanian players, Simona Halep and Irina Begu will face each other
in the quarterfinals of the WTA tennis tournament in Madrid, worth 4.7 million
dollars in prize money. In the previous round, Halep defeated the Swiss player Timea Bacsinszky, while Begu defeated Christina
McHale of the US. (Translated by: C. Mateescu)