July 10, 2024

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 10.07.2024, 13:49

NOTA. Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis, who is attending the NATO anniversary summit in Washington, said on Tuesday evening in a social media post that the allied leaders are prepared for a substantial debate and firm decisions to boost collective security and resilience. President Iohannis is attending on Wednesday and Thursday a NATO meeting in Washington, with talks focusing on important subjects for the future of the Alliance, including a more substantial support package for Ukraine. He is met today at the summit by NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg and US president Joe Biden. Alongside the leaders of the other member states, he will attend a White House dinner given by Joe Biden. Iohannis signed a joint declaration on consolidating Ukraine’s air defence together with the presidents of the US Joe Biden and of Ukraine Volodymir Zelensky and the prime ministers of The Netherlands Dick Schoof, Italy, Giorgia Meloni, and Germany, Olaf Scholz. The signatories pledge to supply Ukraine with five Patriot and Aster 30 air defence systems.

OECD. Romania received the formal approval of the OECD for regional development, said the ministry for development, public works and administration. The statement also says that this confirms both the will and capacity of Romania to implement the legal instruments of the OECD and the alignment of Romania’s policies and practices to those of the OECD in matters of regional development. Romania’s efforts are thus recognised in terms of the consolidation of the regional development policy, especially with respect to the drafting of a solid system of territorial statistics, the adoption of a localised approach in the field of regional development and of strategic documents at regional, county and local level, by means of consolidating governance at a number of levels and improving institutional and fiscal capacity of subnational governments. The formal approval also contains a series of recommendations for improving the policy, governance and financing framework in the field of regional development.

Transport. Romania’s representative to the European Commission, the transport commissioner Adina Vălean has presented a report for her time in office. She said Romania was allocated 12 billion euros from the European Commission in the last five years for transport infrastructure projects and the country has the 6^th biggest fund allocation in the EU. She said Romania was included in the North-South transport corridor linking the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea, that the Black Sea port of Constanţa benefitted from investments to remain a gateway into the EU for goods coming from Asia, and that the Fast Danube II project to improve navigation conditions on the Romanian-Bulgarian section of the river is about to receive European funding. Referring to the situation created by some TAROM pilots who declared themselves unfit to fly, Vălean said this generated disruptions for passengers and that it was an unfortunate move, given that the national airliner TAROM benefits from state aid approved by the European Commission.

Trade. Romania’s trade balance deficit between 1^st January and 31^st May 2024 stood at 12.288 billion euros, 1.230 billion euros more than during the same period last year, according to the National Institute for Statistics. In the first five months of the year, exports dropped by 2.9%, while imports rose by 0.2%. According to the National Institute for Statistics, the areas accounting for the largest shares of exports and imports are held by cars and transport equipment and other manufacture products.

Bridge. The Giurgiu-Ruse bridge over the Danube today went into repair works on the Bulgarian section, for the next two years. According to the motorway company in neighbouring Bulgaria, the works are divided into six stages, without closing traffic, with vehicles travelling on one lane. Romanian citizens were advised to also use the other border crossings into Bulgaria.

Football. The Romanian football champions FCSB defeated the San Marino champions Virtus AC 7-1 in an away match on Tuesday evening, in the first leg of the Champions League first qualifying round. The second leg is scheduled for the 16^th of July in Bucharest. If they advance into the second preliminary round, FCSB will play Maccabi of Tel Aviv. The other Romanian sides playing in European competitions are Romanian Cup holders Corvinul Hunedoara, CFR Cluj and Universitatea Craiova.