July 17, 2015 UPDATE
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România Internațional, 17.07.2015, 12:30
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has rejected the new Fiscal Code and send it back to Parliament for being revised. According to the president, the measures provided by the new law would significantly impact the budgetary construction in the following years. Among other things, the new Fiscal Code stipulates a series of tax cuts, the most important being a cut in the VAT. The European Commission has also underlined the fiscal relaxation stipulated by the new code may result in a swollen budget deficit. Prime Minister Victor Ponta said the president’s decision to reject the Fiscal Code is against Romania’s interests, being a political one aimed at blocking the government’s activity. Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici says the reasons invoked by the president to reject the Code are unjustified. He says the government wants the fiscal measures to be applied as early as 2016 and for this it has two alternatives: either to summon an extraordinary Parliament session or pass an emergency ordinance.
The 28 EU countries on Friday decided to grant Greece 7 billion euros worth of emergency funding, allowing Athens to meet part of its commitments assumed with a view to getting a bailout plan, Vladis Dombrovskis, the European Commissioner for the Euro and Social dialogue, said. According to the European official, the money will be transferred to Athens by Monday, when this country has to reimburse 4.2 billion euros to the European Central Bank. On Friday, Parliaments in Germany, Austria and Sweden approved the start of negotiations concerning the third financial aid package for Greece. Eurozone countries must give the go-ahead before the programme is being officially implemented. On Thursday, eurozone Finance Ministers approved a financial aid to Athens for three years and the beginning of negotiations in this sense. The Eurogroup’s decision comes after Greek MPs have adopted the tough measures asked by international lenders in exchange for the new 86 billion euro bailout plan. In another development, the Finance Ministry in Athens has announced the banks in Greece, closed on June 29th, will open on Monday. The announcement was made after the European Central Bank’s decision to pump 900 million euros into the Greek banks in a week’s time.
After two Davis Cup games counting towards group one in the Euro-African zone, currently underway in the Romanian Black Sea resort of Mamaia, Romania and Slovakia are even, one-all. Marius Copil on Friday clinched a four-set win against Norbert Gombos but Adrian Ungur lost to Martin Klizan in the second game of the day. On Saturday Romanian pair Florin Mergea-Horia Tecau will be playing Andrej Martin and Igor Zelenay, while on Sunday Marius Copil will be up against Martin Klizan. Adrian Ungur will also be facing Norbert Gombos. The winning side will qualify for the World Group’s play-offs.
The Netherlands, Australia and Ukraine on Friday commemorated the victims of the air crash on July 17th last year, when a Boeing plane belonging to Malaysia Airlines was shot down in the Ukrainian region of Donetsk during the conflict between government forces and pro-Russia separatists. ‘It is a moral duty of the international community to punish the culprits’, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko said a year after the incident in which 298 people were killed, most of them Dutch and Australians. Kiev and the West are blaming the pro-Russia separatists for the incident who have allegedly used a surface-to-air BUK missile provided by Russia. Moscow has vehemently denied any involvement in the incident, blaming the Ukrainian side. Malaysia, the Netherlands and other countries have called for setting up an international court under UN aegis to try the culprits, but Russia, which is a permanent UN Security Council member, has vetoed the proposal describing it as counterproductive.
