April 4, 2017
Sixteen European Union countries, Romania included, will create an EU public prosecutors office to combat fraud.
Newsroom, 04.04.2017, 13:52
ATTACK — About 60 people were killed on Tuesday in a chemical attack in the Syrian town of Khan Sheikhun, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said. Dozens more suffered respiratory problems and other symptoms, the SOHR also said. The monitoring group could not confirm the nature of the substance, and said it was unclear if the planes involved in the attack were Syrian or those of government ally Russia. The Syrian opposition called on the UN Security Council to urgently open an investigation into the attack, which they suspect was orchestrated by President Bashar al Assad’s military forces. The Syrian regime denied having used chemical weapons in the conflict that started in 2011 and made over 320 thousand victims.
ST. PETERSBURG – Akbarzhon Jalilov, a naturalised Russian national born in Kyrgyzstan in 1995, is the man suspected of having planted the bomb that killed 14 people on the St. Petersburg metro on Monday, according to the Kyrgyz security service. We remind you that an explosion tore through a train as it was travelling between two stations in Russias second-biggest city. A second device was found and defused at another station. The Romanian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack and conveyed condolences to the victims’ families.
AUDIT — The Romanian Justice Minister Tudorel Toader has announced he will order an external audit of the Prosecutor’s Office with the High Court of Cassation and Justice, the National Anti-Corruption Directorate (DNA) and the Department for the Investigation of Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) to check the prosecutors’ activity. Last week Tudorel Toader presented the conclusions of the assessment he made of Romanias General Prosecutor, Augustin Lazăr, and the Chief Prosecutor of the DNA, Laura Codruţa Kovesi. The decision to assess Lazar and Kovesi came against the background of the Constitutional Court ruling that there was a constitutional conflict between the DNA and Government. We recall that through decree no. 13 the coalition government made up of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberal and Democrats tried to amend the criminal anti-corruption legislation, which triggered large-scale street protests.
VISIT – Romania’s Minister Delegate for European Affairs, Ana Birchall is paying a two-day visit to Paris starting on Tuesday. She will have meetings with Harlem Désir, State Secretary for European Affairs with the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development and with Jean Bizet, President of the French Senate’s European Affairs Committee. The meeting’s agenda includes talks about the future of the EU, Brexit and the Schengen area.
COURT — Romania’s Constitutional Court is today debating the Ombudsmen’s notification as regards the law that prevents convicted criminals from holding government offices. In the previous two meetings magistrates failed to reach a conclusion and postponed the ruling. Romania’s Ombudsman notified the Constitutional Court in January over an article from the Romanian law that he believes violates international laws. The law prevented the Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea, the current Chamber of Deputies speaker, from becoming PM after the parliamentary elections of December 2016.
EU – Sixteen European Union countries, Romania included, have launched plans to create an EU public prosecutor’s office to combat fraud, the bloc announced on Monday. Plans for a European prosecutor first emerged in 2009 to combat fraud that costs the bloc nearly 900 million euros a year. But they have met resistance from some states who fear a loss of sovereignty as the proposed prosecution office would have powers to operate directly in member states.
(Translated by Elena Enache)
