June 29, 2023 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 29.06.2023, 20:00
Budget. The Romanian state has exceeded the estimated spending, and the budget deficit is more than 2.3% of the GDP, after the first five months of the year. Specialists with the Ministry of Finance say that this was caused by the increase in the volume of investments, by the compensation of electricity and natural gas bills for the population and companies, the larger volume of subsidies for medicines but also by the slowing down of revenue collection. The economic analyst Constantin Rudniţchi says that, at macroeconomic level, things are complicated because Romania is under excessive deficit procedure and the schedule for reducing the budget deficit, agreed with the European Commission, may not be observed. He said that the budget for this year was built starting from the figures of 2022, when the very high inflation rates increased the level of budget revenues.
Pensions. Deputy Prime Minister Cătălin Predoiu believes that Romanian magistrates would have no reason to contest at the Constitutional Court the special pension reform bill adopted by parliament on Wednesday. He stated that the representatives of the PSD-PNL governing coalition were in constant dialogue with those of the Superior Council of Magistrates and explained to them “what is possible and what is not possible from the perspective of the rather rigid limits imposed by the criteria previously established under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan”. The statement of the former minister of justice comes in the context in which the High Court of Cassation and Justice decided to challenge the law on the reform of special pensions at the Constitutional Court of Romania. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has announced that the Bucharest Parliament will be convened in an extraordinary session if the CCR decides that there are elements of unconstitutionality in the respective law.
Pay Rise. Trade union leaders in Romanias medical system have announced higher salaries for the employees in this sector starting August 1. On Wednesday, trade union leaders met the countrys Social-Democratic Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu, and deputy Prime Minister Marian Neacsu for talks over the new emergency ordinance regulating the upcoming pay rise. Employment in the field is to be resumed and 4 thousand new jobs will be created shortly. Another 10 thousand jobs are to be created in the countrys medical sector in the following period. All normative acts regulating the aforementioned rights are to be endorsed in a government sitting this week. If their claims had not been met, employees in the medical field would have gone on an all-out strike.
Ukraine. The European and Euro-Atlantic structures, which Romania is a part of, will continue to support Ukraine with everything necessary, President Klaus Johannis said on Thursday in Brussels, where he is participating in a two-day EU summit. He also highlighted the need to help the Republic of Moldova – a state which is also very much affected by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Iohannis also stated that he sent a letter to the European institutions, co-signed by the leaders of nine member states, regarding the reform of the community civil protection systems. The agenda of the meeting includes the current state of the war in Ukraine and the help given to Kyiv to deal with the Russian invasion, economic security and the phenomenon of migration. Issues related to competitiveness, digitization or security are also discussed.
Support. The United States and Romania have taken actions in support of Ukraine and all the vulnerable partners in the Black Sea region – Romanian president Klaus Iohannis said on Wednesday night at the reception offered by the US embassy in Bucharest on Independence Day. The US ambassador to Romania, Kathleen Kavalec says that both countries are sharing “common values, which are the reason why we remain united against Russias unprovoked and terrible attack on Ukraine.
Pogrom. The President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, sent a message on the occasion of the 82nd commemoration of the Pogrom in Iasi, where more than 13,000 Jews were killed. Iohannis urged both the authorities and the responsible institutions to fight against manipulation of the past and extremism. The pogrom was commemorated in the morning in Iasi with a march from the Păcurari Neighborhood Center to the Jewish Cemetery. Marius Cazan, a researcher at the “Elie Wiesel” National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, recalls that the thousands of Jews who survived the massacre were crammed into hermetically sealed freight cars, known as death trains. Held between June 27 and 30, 1941, the Iasi Pogrom was one of the most violent in the history of the Jews in Romania. (MI)
