March 13, 2015 UPDATE
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Florentin Căpitănescu, 13.03.2015, 12:15
President of Romania Klaus Iohannis carries on his official visit to Poland. On Friday Iohannis held talks with Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz. High on the agenda were issues like regional cooperation and strengthening the bilateral relations, as part of the strategic partnership of the two countries. On Thursday, President Iohannis met his Polish counterpart, Bronislaw Komorowski, and signed a joint declaration reinforcing this strategic partnership.
Romanian justice Minister Robert Cazanciuc attended the proceedings of the Justice and Home Affairs Council in Brussels over Thursday and Friday. High on the agenda were data protection in the EU and draft regulations on setting up the European Public Prosecutor’s Office. Concurrently with the proceedings, 12 ministers, Cazanciuc included, signed a letter calling on the European Commission to earmark funds for improving detention conditions. The letter was a Romanian initiative. The Romanian minister also held talks with European Commission’s Secretary General Catherine Day on various issues such as the appointment procedure for the future chief-prosecutor of the Department for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism DIICOT and the setting up of a Debt Recovery Agency.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta called on the European commissioner for agriculture, Phil Hogan, who recently paid a visit to Bucharest, for support in the European Commission’s endorsement of the National Rural Development Programme 2014-2020 (PNDR). Referring to the absorption of European funds for agriculture and rural development, he said that roughly 90% of the total allotted has been spent either in direct payments or investment. At the end of the meeting with commissioner Hogan, the Romanian agriculture minister Daniel Constantin announced that until April Romania is to receive a letter of confirmation from the European Commission for the opening of PNDR 2014-2020, enabling the authorities to launch all the measures in the progamme. This was the first visit paid to Romania by the EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Phil Hogan.
The European Union has extended until September 15th visa restrictions and the freezing of assets for 150 Russian officials and pro-Russian separatists as well as 40 trade businesses. The decision will be published in the Official Journal of the European Union on Saturday. We recall the sanctions were instated against the background of Russia’s actions against the integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine.
From Friday until Sunday one of NATO’s four naval groups is stationed in the Romanian Black Sea port of Constanta. The group consists of four frigates, a cruiser and an auxiliary ship. The Romanian navy is represented by frigate Queen Mary. Romania’s participation in the NATO exercises in the Black Sea was planned in 2014 and is chiefly aimed at developing inter-operability between the Romanian troops and their NATO counterparts. NATO ships will be carrying exercises at sea on Monday also involving the participation of other Romanian war vessels and planes. In another development, over March 16th and 26th, the air base in Campia Turzii, central Romania, will be hosting a large-scale US-Romanian exercise, the Defence Ministry in Bucharest has announced. The exercise, called ‘Dacian Warhawk’, is to bring together roughly 450 soldiers, 200 of them being Romanian, pilots and technical personnel, the same sources have informed.
