February 15, 2024

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Newsroom and Daniel Bilț, 15.02.2024, 13:55

CONFERENCE The Romanian Minister of Culture, Raluca Turcanu, who is these days participating in the World Conference on Cultural and Artistic Education in Abu Dhabi, has underlined the commitment of the institution that is heading to supporting cultural and education programmes contributing to the construction of a sustainable, equitable and resilient future. The Minister has mentioned the steps taken by Romania in this respect such as the process of reinvigorating libraries, museums, theatres or other cultural institutions, increasing the equitable access to education and culture, the institutionalization and valorization of the ecosystems of cultural and artistic education including by means of digital technologies, the importance of funding education and culture, the foundation for cultural and educational policies with a view to training the new generation, the Ministry of Culture says in a communiqué. The Conference, which ends today in the United Arab Emirates, has been the first UNESCO event dedicated to this subject. The event has brought together roughly 90 ministers and deputy-ministers of culture and education from around the world, who endorsed a joint statement presenting international desiderata in terms of education through culture and art.

MEETING The Italian capital Rome is today seeing the third meeting of the governments of Romania and Italy, under the leadership of the two Prime Ministers, Marcel Ciolacu and Giorgia Meloni. The event has taken place 13 years since the previous inter-government meeting. Earlier this morning, the Romanian Prime Minister was received by Pope Francis at the Vatican, upon which he talked with the state secretary of the Holy See, Cardinal Pietro Parolin. The Romanian delegation’s visit to Italy will end with a Romania-Italy economic forum. On Wednesday, in the first day of the visit in Italy, the head of the Executive in Bucharest, held talks with the mayor of Rome and representatives of the community of Romanians in Italy. Italy is Romania’s second major trade partner, the second market for the Romanian exports, and the second major source for Romania’s imports. The two countries last year reached a record high of their bilateral trade, which stood at over 20 billion Euros. Italy comes sixth in the ranking of foreign investment in Romania.

NATO In 2024, 18 NATO member countries are to hit the target of earmarking at least 2% of their GDP for defence, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg announced on Wednesday ahead of the meeting of NATO defence ministers. According to the high NATO official, the European NATO members will be investing a total of 380 billion dollars in defence this year. At the same time, Stoltenberg said that last year saw an unprecedented 11% rise in defence expenses in countries like Canada and the European members. NATO members agreed in 2006 to spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence, but only some of them, Romania included have reached this objective. However, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the NATO members, especially Germany, have reiterated the pledge.

CALL Romania’s transporters have called on the Romanian government to intervene and put an end to the checking procedures initiated by the Bulgarian customs officers, which they consider abusive and which have been causing huge delays at the border between the two countries. The National Union of the Road Transporters has called on the Romanian Prime Minister, the Ministers of Transport and the Foreign Minister asking for support in this issue. Even in the absence of measures for solving the situation, the transporters have called for a decoupling of the two countries in the process of their Schengen accession. They argue that if they still have to wait for days at the Bulgarian border, at least the Schengen accession without Bulgaria would reduce the delays at the border with Hungary. Romania and Bulgaria are to be joining Schengen in March this year but only with their air and maritime borders.