April 21, 2023

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Newsroom, 21.04.2023, 14:00

TALKS Romania will not ban the import of Ukrainian grains unilaterally and will wait for the European Commission to implement measures aimed at supporting farmers in Central and Eastern Europe, the country’s Minister of Agriculture, Petre Daea, said on Friday. According to him, Romania and Ukraine will consult weekly regarding the expected volumes of grain, in an attempt to limit imports. At the end of a meeting held in Bucharest with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Solsky, Petre Daea said that Romania stands in solidarity with farmers from Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia, but the rules must be made together. In turn, Mykola Solsky thanked the minister for the sincere and constructive dialogue as well as the Romanian people for the sincere support he has felt for the past two years. The situation we are in now requires some very quick decisions – added the Ukrainian official. The two ministers also tackled the cereal crisis online, a couple of days ago, when Petre Daea briefed his Ukrainian counterpart on the serious situation farmers are facing in Romania and informed him about the measures taken in relation to the transit of Ukrainian cereals.

BILL Government in Romania is expected to present next
week a draft emergency ordinance regarding the efficiency of public spending.
This will also include other fiscal-budgetary measures, which must not be
perceived as austerity measures, Finance Minister Adrian Câciu has said.
According to the country’s Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciucă, curbing budget
expenditures is aimed at being within the deficit limits at the end of the year
and is not going to affect investments and salaries. The Romanian official also
made an appeal to the big taxpayers urging them to pay their debts to the
state.

DEFENCE The Romanian
Minister of Defence Angel Tilvar is today attending the meeting of the Contact
Group for Ukraine, presently underway in Ramstein, Germany. According to a
communique by the Ministry of Defence, the meeting of the already established format,
on the support the international community is providing to the Ukrainian
partner, proves to be another opportunity to exchange ideas on the security
situation created by the war the Russian Federation is presently waging on that
country and to identify new ways of supporting the Ukrainian partner. According
to Reuters, the German Minister of Defence, Boris Pistorius, has rejected a
quick decision on Ukraine’s membership at NATO. Kyiv wants to join the
North-Atlantic Alliance but the country’s entry either into NATO or the EU is
not going to be discussed at the aforementioned meeting in Ramstein. NATO’s
Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg has extended an invitation to president
Zelensky for the NATO summit in Vilnius in July, which will have high on the
agenda, the country’s NATO accession as well as solid security guarantees for Kyiv.

HOSPITALS The Romanian Minister of Health, Alexandru Rafila, on Thursday signed the financing contracts through the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) for a new hospital infrastructure. Thus, military hospitals in the country, as well as others in the capital Bucharest and the city of Constanta, in the south-east, will benefit from new wards and pavilions. At the same time, a tuberculosis diagnosis and treatment center is to be built in Bucharest. The general objective of the PNRR is the development of Romania by carrying out essential programs and projects, which support resilience, the level of preparedness for crisis situations, the ability to adapt and the potential for growth, through major reforms and key investments with funds allocated by the European Commission within the mechanism.

(bill)