June 14, 2016
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 14.06.2016, 12:00
TALKS Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has today held talks with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella in Bucharest. High on the agenda were ways of stepping up the bilateral strategic partnership between the two countries, the challenges currently facing the European Union and the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw. President Iohannis has referred to the over 1,200,000 Romanians living in Italy and underlined the need for stepping up joint efforts to increase their involvement in Italy’s political and social life. In turn president Mattarella said the Romanian community in Italy is large, appreciated and has become increasingly integrated adding that the level of cooperation between Italy and Romania is truly exemplary.
VISIT Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos will be in Canada until Thursday, which is the first visit paid by a high-ranking Romanian official in the past 15 years. The Romanian Prime Minister will be holding talks with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other authorities, about a visa waiver for the Romanian citizens. Romania and Bulgaria are the only EU countries, whose citizens still need visas to enter Canada. Last week the two EU members signed a joint letter calling on Canada to lift visas for their citizens. On the other hand, Canada has staunchly supported Romania’s integration into NATO, being the first country to have ratified the accession protocols of the candidate countries that were accepted at the NATO summit in Prague on March 28th 2003.
FOOTBALL Romania’s national football side is bracing up for the game against Switzerland due on Wednesday as part of the European Championships underway in France. Last week, in the tournament’s opening match Romania lost to France two-one, while Switzerland clinched a one-nil win against Albania also in Group A. Today will see the first matches in Group F: Austria is playing Hungary while Portugal will be taking on Iceland. On Monday in Group E, Italy outperformed Belgium two-nil, while Sweden held Ireland to a one-all draw. Also on Monday in Group D, Spain obtained a one-nil win against the Czech Republic.
MEETING On Tuesday and Wednesday Romania’s Defence Minister Mihnea Motoc will be joining his NATO counterparts for a meeting in Brussels. High on the agenda are the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, the allied presence in the Eastern flank and the situation in Afghanistan. On the event’s sidelines, Minister Motoc will be meeting his counterparts from Italy, Britain, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine and Bulgaria. Before the meeting, the US permanent representative to NATO, Douglas Lute, has said that the North-Atlantic Alliance is with Romania and appreciates the fact that Romania is hosting the anti-missile shield in Deveselu. The US official has also said that if there are actions from any state that threaten not only Deveselu or any other part of Romanian sovereignty then the Alliance will take defending measures.
COMMEMORATION Bucharest is commemorating 26 years since the 1990 miners’ raid on Bucharest, which stifled a large-scale protest rally against the leftist government that came to power after the fall of the communist dictatorship in 1989. Against the background of a series of violent events the army had already managed to contain, the then president of Romania, Ion Iliescu invoked a coup attempt by the far right political groups and called on the population to defend democratic institutions. The miners who arrived in Bucharest killed 6 people, wounded hundreds and caused over 1,000 abusive arrests. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Romania asking it to continue investigation in the file of the miners’ raid in June 1990.
