5 July, 2017

A round-up of local and international news.

Newsroom, 05.07.2017, 13:35

Three Seas Initiative summit. On Thursday, Romania’s
president Klaus Iohannis is attending a summit of the Three Seas Initiative,
namely the Baltic Sea, the Adriatic Sea and the Black Sea, hosted by Warsaw.
The heads of state and representatives from 11 other Central and Eastern
European countries, namely Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia and Hungary, are taking
part. The US president Donald Trump will also attend the summit as a special
guest. The purpose of the Initiative is to provide political support for the
cooperation and interconnection between the economies of the countries in the
geographical area bordered by the three seas in fields such as energy, transport,
telecommunications and environmental protection.

Public
broadcasting law. The Constitutional Court of Romania says it will discuss, on
the 12th of July, a complaint by the main opposition party, the
National Liberal Party, in respect of an amendment to the law regulating the
activity of the public radio and television services. The National Liberal
Party says the law irremediably compromises the statutes, organisation and
activity of these two autonomous public services of national interest. The
Liberals also say the law does not clarify the legal status of the two services
given the change in the way they are funded following the elimination of a
number of duties at the beginning of the year. They moreover argue that the new
law eliminates the state’s constitutional obligation to consolidate ties with
the Romanians living abroad from an identity, ethnic, cultural, linguistic and
religious point of view following the repeal of an article providing funding
for the production and broadcast of programmes for the Diaspora. This, in the
Liberals’ opinion, will lead to a blocking of the activity of Radio Romania
International and TVR International. The law in question was adopted on the 20th
of June by the Senate, the decision-making body in this case.

G20. The G20 summit taking place on Friday and Saturday in
Hamburg may turn out to be one of the most conflicting since the creation of
this forum in 2008, with bilateral tensions being fed by the international
developments and essential disagreements with the US president Donald Trump,
the France Presse news agency notes. According to the agency, the talks between
Trump and the Chinese president Xi Jinping are set to be difficult following
the launch of North Korea’s first intercontinental missile on Tuesday, seen as
a provocation to America on its national day. Hamburg will also host the first
meeting between Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, with
the latter expected to propose the normalisation of relations between the two
countries. France Presse also notes that relations between Germany and Turkey
have continued to deteriorate after a failed coup against president Recep
Tayyip Erdogan in July last year. Turkey became even more vexed with Germany
when the latter rejected a request from Ankara that Erdogan be allowed to
address members of the ethnic Turkish community living in Germany on the
sidelines of the G20 summit.

North Korea. An emergency meeting of the UN
Security Council requested by the US following North Korea’s successfully
testing its first intercontinental ballistic missile will take place today. The
test sparked a strong reaction from US president Donald Trump, who called on
Beijing, Pyong Yang’s main ally, to act firmly to end such moves. Russia and
China, two permanent members of the UN Security Council, have described the
test as unacceptable. They urged North Korea to reinstate a moratorium on
nuclear tests and ballistic missile testing, while also requesting the US to
put an end to its military exercises in the area to defuse the situation in the
Korean Peninsula.

Wimbledon. Three
Romanian tennis players, namely world no. 2 Simona Halep, the 64th-ranked
Irina Begu and the 115th-ranked Ana Bogdan, are today in action in
the second round at Wimbledon. Halep faces the Brazilian player Beatriz Haddad Maia, Begu faces Croatia’s
Ana Konjuh, while Bogdan meets France’s Caroline Garcia. Also in the second
round, another Romanian player, Sorana Cirstea, faces the American player Bethanie
Mattek-Sands on Thursday. The doubles matches also begin today, with Begu,
Cirstea, Monica Niculescu and Raluca Olaru playing in the women’s doubles and
Horia Tecau, Marius Copil and Florin Mergea playing in the men’s doubles.