December 13, 2017 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 13.12.2017, 20:02
KING The coffin with the dead body of Romania’s former sovereign Mihai the 1st arrived in Romania on Wednesday and was further taken to the Peles Castle in Sinaia, southern Romania where officials from Bucharest and from the ex-soviet Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova presented their condolences. Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, the country’s Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and the speaker of Parliament in the Republic of Moldova Adrian Candu have also signed in the book of condolences. People’s access to the Castle was restricted but many took to the streets to see the funeral procession and bid farewell to Romania’s last king who ruled their country between 1940 and 1947. The king is presently lying in state at the Royal Castle in Bucharest where everybody who wants to pay their respects is expected. King Mihai died in Switzerland at 96 on December 5th and is to be buried in Curtea de Arges, southern Romania, where all the Romanian kings have been interred.
LAW The government of the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet Romanian-speaking state, has endorsed a draft law on changing in the Constitution the name of the country’s official language from Moldovan into Romanian. Under the law, the syntagm ‘the Moldovan language using a Latin alphabet’ has been replaced by ‘the Romanian Language”. The country’s pro-Russia president Igor Dodon has described the decision to change the name of the official language as unacceptable. He has voiced conviction that the amendment will not get Parliament approval.
SURVEY Roughly 16 thousand Romanian doctors have left the country to work abroad, particularly in EU countries, shows a survey published by the Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees, a group formed by several Romanian NGOs. According to the survey, Romania is in need of 600 GPs and 4,000 qualified doctors. On the other hand the number of employees in the research & development sector has dropped by 30% in the past 20 years. The survey has been conducted on the migration of highly qualified professionals in three areas: medicine, research & development and IT.
BUDGET BILL The 2018 state and social security bills were being debated on in the joint budget and finance committees of Romania’s Parliament, with the final vote scheduled for December 21. The budget for 2018 was based on a 5.5% economic growth rate, a 3.1% inflation rate, an average exchange rate of 4.55 lei for the Euro and an increase in the average number of employees by 4.2%. Healthcare, education and investments are the priorities of the government in Bucharest if we look at the amount of funds these areas have been allocated in the 2018 budget bill. The budget bill is contested by the Opposition that has filed almost 4 thousand amendments to it.
