February 27, 2014

A round-up of news from Romania.

România Internațional, 27.02.2014, 13:06

Romania’s Social Democrat prime minister Victor Ponta is having talks with the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians to form a new majority together with the Social Democratic Party, the Conservative Party and the National Union for the Progress of Romania. Talks started after the withdrawal of the National Liberal Party from the government and the de facto break-up of the Social Liberal Union, the coalition that won the 2012 parliamentary elections. Victor Ponta said he would announce the membership of the new cabinet on the 4th of March.

Romanian prosecutors worked on over 7,900 cases and indicted 1,000 people in 2013, one third more than in 2012, said the head of the National Anticorruption Directorate, Laura Kovesi who made public the directorate’s activity report for 2013. She said 6 cabinet ministers, 5 county council presidents and vice-presidents, tens of mayors and deputy mayors, magistrates, lawyers and directors of state companies and other public institutions were indicted last year. Laura Kovesi emphasised the National Anticorruption Directorate is a success story for the judiciary reform in Romania and a good example for similar European institutions.

The Romanian government has approved a letter of intent agreed on with the International Monetary Fund to accompany a stand-by agreement signed last autumn. The document was submitted to president Traian Basescu who said he would be signing it. Earlier, the president made the signing of the letter conditional on the elimination of a rise in the excise duty on fuel. The letter contains no reference to this rise or any facilities regarding the repayment of bank loans for individual persons.

Prime minister Victor Ponta travels to Rome today for talks with the Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi and Pope Francis at the Vatican. Ponta will also attend a meeting of the Party of European Socialists to discuss the nomination of the European Parliament president Martin Schulz as the head of the European Commission to replace Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, whose term ends at the end of October.

The Romanian government said 12 people injured in the violent incidents in Ukraine would receive medical treatment in Bucharest. They will be brought to Romania by a defence ministry aircraft. Ukraine called on European states for help, with Germany and Poland being the first to offer assistance.