March 20, UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 20.03.2014, 12:12
The EU decided to cancel the summit with Russia scheduled for June, in retort to the annexation of Crimea by Moscow — the French president Francois Hollande announced on Thursday at the spring European Council. Romania is represented at the Council by President Traian Basescu, who, against the backdrop of the Ukrainian crisis, calls for clearer prospects of EU accession to be given to the Republic of Moldova, Romania’s neighbor. The Romanian President also said that is the best solution to guarantee Moldova’s security. Also on Thursday the American president Barack Obama announced sanctions targeting another 20 Moscow officials and a Russian bank in retort to Russia annexing Crimea. On Monday similar sanctions were imposed on 11 Russian and Ukrainian top officials among whom the dismissed president Viktor Ianukovici. Obama warned Moscow the US would take measures against several key sectors of the Russian economy.
The leader of the separatist regime in the pro-Russian region of Transdniester (in the east of the Republic of Modlova) Evgheni Şevciuk is in Moscow for talks with the Russia deputy prime minister, Dmitri Rogozin. He said the Russian government was ready to take into consideration possible economic aid for the separatist region, after Şevciuk criticized the setting up of a so-called blockade along the border between Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova by the new power in Kiev. According to the press Transdniester asked Moscow to stipulate in its legislation the possibility of allowing the breakaway region to join Russia. We recall that Transdniester went out, de facto, from Chisinau’s control in 1992 after an armed conflict that left behind hundreds of dead and which was ended with the intervention of the Russian troops on the side of the separatists. More on this topic after the news.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry announced on Thursday evening that a group of armed men took over control of a Ukrainian military ship anchored in Sevastopol, Crimea. In another move, the Ukrainian special services SBU announced they arrested a Russian spy who recruited Ukrainian soldiers with a view to obtaining secret information and who also gathered compromising data about corrupt officials. This happened after the lower chamber of the Russian parliament on Thursday ratified the treaty on Crimea’s rejoining Russia, which was signed on Tuesday by President Vladimir Putin and pro-Russian leaders of the Ukrainian separatist region. The Russian MPs also passed a constitutional law on the Russian administration’s taking over the peninsula.
The Romanian FM Titus Corlatean underlined in Berlin the importance of the German minority in Romania and of the Romanian community in Germany, which contribute, according to him, to building stronger relations between the two countries. FM Corlatean hailed the presence in the German parliament of the first German born in Romania, MP Bernd Fabritius, the president of the Federation of Transylvanian Saxons. During his talks with the Romanian FM the German official appreciated the generous legal framework Romania created for the protection of the cultural and linguistic identity of the German minority.
The leader of the paramilitary organization the New Hungarian Guard, Mikola Bela, was expelled from Romania on Thursday, after the Court of Appeal in Bucharest declared him an undesirable citizen for a period of 5 years. He was living in the central Romanian town of Targu Mures and had been undertaking, according to state officials, various extremist activities that ran counter to Romania’s national security. On Monday the Romanian Interior Ministry decided to prevent Mikola and another 3 Hungarian citizens, members of a far right, Xenophobe and irredentist organization, from entering Romania. The Hungarian community in Romania numbers 1.5 million people and the political party representing them, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, is part of the governing coalition in Bucharest.
The chairman of the Constanta County Council Nicusor Constantinescu has been released under judicial control after he had been detained, on Wednesday, by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate. According to prosecutors, Nicusor Constantinescu is subject to criminal investigations for abuse in office. He has allegedly prevented inspections by the Court of Accounts and caused damages of 30 million Euros by failing to issue or extend town-planning certificates and building permits for wind power generators, requested by two companies. Meanwhile, the president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Romania, Mihail Vlasov, has been placed under preventive arrest for 30 days. He was caught taking 200,000 Euros, as a first instalment of a one million Euro bribe that Vlasov was to receive from a businessman in exchange for helping him win a case at the Court of Arbitration, an institution subordinated to the Chamber of Commerce.
