January 31, 2015 UPDATE

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România Internațional, 31.01.2015, 19:40

Former Romanian economy minister, Democrat-Liberal Adriean Videanu, on Saturday stepped down from the position of president of the Democratic-Liberal Party and also from the position of head of the Bucharest branch of the newly-formed National-Liberal Party. Videanu, who has also had his party membership suspended, resigned after the High Court of Cassation and Justice in Bucharest had ruled on his 30-day preventive arrest in a corruption file. Other former high officials have been detained in the same file, such as the former head of the Direction for the Investigation of Organized Crimes and Terrorism, DIICOT, Alina Bica, and her former advisor Florentin Mihailescu, businessman Dorin Cocos and his son Alin. Among the charges they are facing are bribery, abuse in office, influence peddling and abetment in crime. Both Alina Bica and Dorin Cocos are already serving preventive arrest sentences in other files.

Chiefs of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI) are to be heard in Parliament next week following allegations leveled by MP and former minister Elena Udrea against the interim director of the aforementioned institution, Florian Coldea. The head of the Parliamentary Committee monitoring the SRI activity, Georgian Pop announced the hearings would mainly focus on the investigation carried out by the SRI after Udrea had denounced the pressures mounted by director Coldea. Mrs. Udrea has recently leveled a series of accusations against major political leaders and members from the administration of some major state institutions, allegedly involved in illegal and concealed activities. These allegations have been vehemently dismissed by Prime Minister Victor Ponta and the co-president of the opposition National Liberal Party Vasile Blaga. As of Thursday, Elena Udrea has been under investigation in a file on the fraudulent acquiring of IT licenses, which also involves her ex-husband. She has been accused of having got and used goods that she knew were coming from illegal activities.

Romania is one of the six countries in eastern Europe, in which NATO is going to deploy small units — sources with the North Atlantic Alliance announced yesterday. The Alliance’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said these units, which are to be deployed in countries like Estonia, Latvia, Poland and Bulgaria, will play a key role, serving as the connection between national armies and NATO troops. We recall that NATO has decided to create a rapid reaction force in Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine.

The Liberal Party in the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet country with a Romanian-speaking majority has announced its readiness to back the candidacy of Iurie Leanca for the position of Prime Minister, at the same time adding that all depends on the names proposed for the ministerial seats in the future executive in Chisinau. The Alliance for a European Moldova, made up of Liberal-democrats and Democrats has mustered only 42 MP seats and they need at least 51 out of a total 101 seats to form a government. The communists have already stated their refusal to vote for a minority government headed by Iurie Leanca.

Italy has a new president. His name is Sergio Mattarela and at the age of 73 he obtained a landslide win for a 7-year mandate. Son of an iconic Christian-Democratic leader, Mattarela had a brother who was murdered by the Mafia back in the 1980s. He was an MP for 25 years and occupied a ministerial seat five times. Since 2011 he served as judge at the Constitutional Court. In Italy, the president has only honorary attributions but he could play a major role in a political crisis, as it has happened in the past years. His predecesor, Giorgio Napolitano, who will turn 90 in 2015, stepped down in early January, before the end of his second term in office on age-related reasons.

Greek leaders are to start a European tour on Sunday in an attempt to identify allies in their anti-austerity campaign. The new finance minister Yanis Varufakis will be holding talks with his French counterpart Michel Sapin in Paris on Sunday, although his visit was initially scheduled for Monday. The next leg of his tour is Rome, while the country’s new Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is expected to arrive in Cyprus on Sunday, fly to Rome on Tuesday and to Paris the next day. On Friday upon his meeting with Eurogroup chief, Jeroen Dijsselbloem, minister Varufakis said the Greek government would not cooperate with the international lenders and would not comply with the austerity programme they called for. The Dutch official, however, said that Greece must meet the conditions of the contract it presently has with the eurozone and that a unilateral decision in this respect could affect the progress registered so far.