August 1, 2014 UPDATE
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România Internațional, 01.08.2014, 19:51
The President of Romania, Traian Basescu, Friday described as inappropriate the nominations made by PM Victor Ponta for the Budget and Culture ministers. The head of state has announced that he does not reject the nominations, Rozalia Biro, from the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania for Culture Minister and Claudiu Manta, from the Social Democratic Party for Budget Minister, but that he gives PM Ponta until early next week to come up with other nominations. In turn, the latter said he would not make new nominations unless the President rejected the current ones.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta has nominated Dacian Ciolos for a new term as European Commissioner for Agriculture. To that end, Ponta has sent a letter to Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the new European Commission. The Romanian Government’s proposal is also supported by President Traian Basescu. Aged 45, Dacian Ciolos has been the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development since February 2010. He was also Romania’s Agriculture Minister in 2007-2008. Dacian Ciolos is the initiator of the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Out of the total European budget, agriculture gets 40%, amounting to 363 billion Euros. In the 2014-2020 budget framework, Romania will get approximately 19 billion Euros.
Tens of Dutch and Australian experts, accompanied by OSCE observers, arrived on Friday at the site of the Malaysian airliner crash in the secessionist-controlled area in east Ukraine. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian army resumed its offensive against the pro-Russian insurgents, which had been discontinued to facilitate the access of the international mission to the crash site. Also on Friday, the new EU economic sanctions against Russia took effect. According to experts, the sanctions, which deny the access of Russian state-owned banks to the European capital market and ban the sale of military equipment and technology, are among the toughest imposed on Russia since the end of the Cold War.
Israel announced on Friday that the ceasefire agreement with the Islamist Palestinian movement Hamas was no longer in force. International news agencies note that the parties accuse each other of breaking the truce, which came into force on Friday morning and was intended to last for three days. Also on Friday, the UN resumed its call for an end to violence and urged Israel and Hamas to reaffirm their commitment to the truce agreement. Over 1,400 Palestinians, mostly civilians, have been killed and several tens of thousands fled their homes since the start of the Israeli offensive on July the 8th. In turn, Israel lost around 60 troops.
