December 29, 2023

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 29.12.2023, 13:55

Budget. President Klaus
Iohannis has promulgated the State Budget Law and the State Social Insurance
Budget Law for the year 2024. Next year, Romania’s budget will be focused on
investments worth about 7% of the GDP, as well as on an economic growth rate of
3.4%, while the budget deficit is estimated at 5% of the GDP. The budgets were
endorsed five days later by the joined chambers of the Romanian Parliament.

Szeklers. The Romanian Senate gathers today to debate and vote on three
legislative initiatives set forth by the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians (UDMR)
regarding the autonomy of the so-called Szeklers Land, in the center of the
country. The initiatives were rejected
by the Chamber of Deputies on Thursday. At the plenary talks, deputies from all
the other parties stressed that such bills came in violation of some articles in the Constitution and harmed the
rule of law, while the initiators argued the opposite, saying that territorial
autonomy worked in several European states. Deputies from the opposition nationalist
Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) criticized the urgency of scheduling
the debates during the parliamentary vacation and accused an agreement between the
Social Democratic Party ( member of the ruling coalition, together with the
National Liberal Party), and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, for electoral purposes. The rejected texts
provided for the autonomization of Covasna and Harghita counties and a
part of Mureş county and their establishment as an autonomous region with legal
personality. In the hypothetical autonomous entity, the Hungarian
language would have the same status as the official language of the Romanian
state. The land would also have its own president, elected for a four-year term
by universal suffrage. The so-called Szeklers Land, the only area in Romania
where the Hungarian population is the majority, benefited from autonomy between
1952 and 1968. Historians say that, in Romania occupied by Soviet troops, that
was an experiment imposed on the vassal regime in Bucharest by the Kremlin
dictator Joseph Stalin, at the insistence of the communist leaders in Budapest.
The ethnic Hungarian population in Romania decreased, according to the 2021
census, both in absolute values ​​(from 1.22 million in 2011 to 1.002 million
now) and as a share in the total population (from 6.5% to 6% ), according to
data provided by the National Institute of Statistics. Its main political party,
UDMR, has been represented, without interruption, in the Parliament of
post-communist Romania, from 1990 until today. Since 1996, the UDMR has been
part of numerous coalition governments in Bucharest, whether right-wing or
left-wing.

Government. The Romanian Government will meet again today, in the last
session of this year, to approve normative acts regarding scholarships for
students in pre-university education and the granting of state aid in
agriculture. The Government has also adopted, by emergency ordinance, wage
increases in education. It is an increase of almost 20% on average, which will
be allocated in two installments: starting January 1 and June 1, 2024,
respectively. About 350,000 people in the system will benefit from this
measure. Principals and deputy principals of schools will receive salaries 36%
higher than this month.

Timisoara. The activities carried out part of the ‘Timişoara – European
Capital of Culture 2023’ program, including the Constantin Brâncuşi exhibition,
received the most responses (29%) to receive the title of ‘event of the year
2023 in Romania’, in a survey carried out by the Romanian Institute for
Evaluation and Strategy (IRES). According to the sociological research, the
second event that marked Romania in 2023 was the qualification of the national
football team to the final tournament of the European Championship – UEFA EURO
2024, which will take place next summer in Germany (24% of responses).
Regarding culture and free time, 58% of the survey respondents said that they
read at least one book in 2023, and 41%
that they also bought books, 36% went to a show, and 20% went to a stadium or
attended a sports competition. More than three quarters of the survey
participants (76%) stated that had been to church this year.

Handball. The men’s national teams of Romania and Georgia will face each
other today in the final of the Carpathian Trophy international handball
tournament, organized in Pitesti, southern Romania. On Thursday, in the semifinals, Romania
defeated Greece 31-27, and Georgia beat Slovakia 32-27. For Romania, trained by
the famous Spanish coach Xavi Pascual, the Carpathian Trophy is the last test
before the European Championship – EHF EURO 2024 in Germany, between January 10
and 28, 2024. The Romanians will play in Group B, alongside Spain, Austria and
Croatia. The first two ranked teams will qualify for the so-called main groups. A
quadruple world champion in the 1960-70s, Romania had not qualified for a
European Championship since 1996.