December 12, 2020 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 12.12.2020, 19:20
TALKS The National
Liberal Party, the USR PLUS Alliance and the Democratic Union of Ethnic
Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) on Saturday kicked off a new round of talks in an
attempt to forge the future centre-to-right government and share portfolios in
the new legislature. The teams set up the structure of the ruling programme and
pledged to carry on talks on Sunday. This round of talks proves to be difficult
because the Liberals, who are currently ruling the country and came second in
the legislative election on December 6th, aren’t willing to give up several
ministries, such as finances, justice, transports, development and EU funds,
whereas the USR PLUS Alliance is claiming some of these portfolios. UDMR would
like to take over the healthcare, culture and the environment, as it
coordinated these ministries before and would also like to take over other
portfolios as well. The talks should be completed before the consultations with
president Klaus Iohannis on Monday for the designation of a Prime Minister.
These consultations will begin with the Social Democratic Party, which mustered
the largest number of votes in the latest election. The Alliance for the Union
of Romanians AUR, a party founded a year ago, got half million votes and ranks
fourth in Parliament. The Legislature will be completed by the representatives
of national minorities, other than the Hungarian one. The PSD proposed
Alexandru Rafila, Romania’s WHO representative for the position of Prime
Minister, whereas the Liberals have designated the incumbent Finance Minister
Florin Citu.
ALERT Authorities in Romania have
decided to extend the state of alert because of the Covid-19 pandemic for
another month, starting December 14th. The present restrictions will
remain in place including the nighttime curfew. Only one restriction has been
added; in order to avoid overcrowding ski-slopes, access to cable cars has been
restricted to only 10 people. Authorities have made a new appeal asking the
Romanians to limit visits, avoid going caroling and to New Year’s parties. Over
13,100 Covid-related fatalities have been registered in Romania since the
beginning of the pandemic. 6460 new infection cases have been reported in the
past 24 hours, mostly in Bucharest, where the rate of infections has exceeded 7
per one thousand people. 13 hundred people are in intensive care.
CLIMATE Romanian president
Klaus Iohannis has called into attention the fact that the climate change
effects are being felt in Romania more and more. Its summers have become hotter
and hotter while desertification and drought keep affecting crops and limiting people
access to food supplies. In a message conveyed on celebrating 5 years since the
Paris Agreement on climate change, the head of the Romanian state said it’s
imperative that we make sure these effects will not deepen and multiply to
dramatically impact the citizens’ life and health. In this respect at the
European Council summit this week, we have agreed with EU leaders, to bring
down greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 as against the year 1990.
President Iohannis said the authorities would implement in the following years
a series of projects allowing for the reduction of greenhouse gases at the same
time sustaining economic growth. The main goal of the Paris Agreement is to
limit global warming under 2°C and make efforts to keep it at 1.5°C by the end
of the century.
TENNIS Romanian tennis player Sorana
Cirstea on Saturday clinched a 4-6, 6-3, 6-3 win against Katerina Siniakova of
the Czech Republic in the finals of the ITF tournament in Dubai. Sorana has
also won the other three matches she played against Siniakova, in Eastbourne in
2017, in Madrid two years later and in the first round of US Open. The victory against
Siniakova has prompted Cirstea to the 71st position in the WTA
ranking.
(bill)
