April 24, 2017 UPDATE

Mogherini and Lavrov held talks in Moscow but reached no conclusion

Newsroom, 24.04.2017, 20:01

MOSCOW – The EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini held talks on Monday in Moscow with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the main topics of the international and bilateral agenda, but no progress was made. Mogherini, on her first official visit to Moscow in her current role as the EUs foreign policy chief, said there was no point in pretending that there were not real problems in the relations between Russia and the EU. The European Unions top diplomat said that the bloc wanted better ties with Russia but could not pretend Moscow did not annex Ukraines Crimea in 2014 and that EU sanctions would stay in place. Mogherini explained that EU sanctions on Russia are not a “goal in themselves,” but they are aimed at helping solve the conflict in eastern Ukraine that killed over 10 thousand people in three years. In his turn, Lavrov said that both parties reiterated the need for the peace accords in Minsk to be implemented in order to put an end to the conflict.

SALARIES — The unified pay scale bill was submitted to the Senate on Monday, being signed by 205 MPs of the ruling coalition. Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea, said that a few dozen amendments were proposed in the two weeks that the bill was posted on his partys website. The government promised that the bill, if passed, would come into effect on July 1st. The opposition has criticized the bill.

INVESTIGATION – The General Prosecutor’s Office in Bucharest announced on Monday that it opened a criminal case into the 2009 presidential election in Romania, following information made public by journalist Dan Andronic. Andronic, who worked as a campaign consultant to former President Traian Basescu, recently wrote that on the presidential election day he took part in a meeting at the house of former interior minister Gabriel Oprea, where heads of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA) and the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) were also present and were discussing about the vote results. Last week, Liviu Dragnea and Calin Popescu Tariceanu, heads of the governing Social Democratic Party (PSD) and Liberal-Democratic Alliance (ALDE) and speakers of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, said that they would ask Parliament to set up a committee that would investigate aspects related to the organization of the 2009 presidential elections and their outcome.

MCV — In Bucharest, Justice Minister Tudorel Toader, Prosecutor General Augustin Lazar, head of anti-corruption directorate Laura Codruta Kovesi, and European Affairs Minister Ana Birchall, discussed with European experts the evaluation mission as part of the Mechanism of Cooperation and Verification. The Justice Minister will issue a progress report aggregating data provided by all institutions under monitoring by the Mechanism, in preparation for the evaluation mission of May 2017. The Mechanism has been put in place right after Romania joined the EU alongside Bulgaria in 2007, in order to rectify issues with the judicial system and corruption in both countries. The latest reports in those areas have been largely positive with regard to Romania.

SENTENCE — The Supreme Court in Bucharest on Monday rejected the appeal of the leader of the Social Democratic Party, Liviu Dragnea, who wanted his two-year suspended prison sentence annulled. Dragnea attacked the sentence on technical issues, such as the fact that the decision was not issued within 30 days at the latest from the pronouncement, and that the head justice who presided over the Court was no longer a judge at the time, as he had retired. The Social Democratic leader received a suspended prison sentence in April 2016 for rigging the 2012 referendum to impeach the then Romanian president Traian Basescu. At the same time, Dragnea said that he did not rule out setting up a Parliament committee to investigate the 2012 referendum, which was declared null and void for a lack of quorum. A similar committee was set up to investigate the 2009 presidential elections, after claims of fraud appeared in the public space.

PARIS — The leader of the French center movement En Marche!, Emmanuel Macron, won Sundays first round of presidential elections in France with 24,01% of the votes. On May 7th, he faces off against the extreme right National Front leader Marine LePen, who got 21.30% of votes. The defeated candidates of the traditional right and left announced they support Macron. During the campaign, the latter stood out by running on mostly economic matters, such as corporate tax cuts, flexibility on the duration of the work week, reducing unemployment, investing in vocational conversion, support for renewable energy and modernizing infrastructure. This first round of elections was held under the shadow of increased security measures against fears of terrorism. In spite of that, presence at the polls was almost 80%.

(Translated by Elena Enache)