May 11, 2015, UPDATE
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România Internațional, 11.05.2015, 12:30
Romanian president Klaus Iohannis and Bruce Andrews, US Deputy Secretary of Commerce on Monday held talks on raising US investment in Romania and on strengthening the economic dimension of the Strategic Partnership between the two countries. According to a Presidential Administration communique, during the talks, Iohannis highlighted the high potential for a deepened bilateral cooperation in several fields, such as the IT sector, research, innovation, security and energy security. Bruce Andrews is chief of a US delegation curently on a cybersecurity trade mission to Bucharest. Also on Monday, Andrews met Romania’s Prime Minister Victor Ponta; the two officials agreed for Romania and the USA to set up a working group on cybersecurity to contribute to strengthening cooperation in this field. Ponta and Andrews met during the Cyber Security Summit underway in Bucharest.
East European countries must trim their debt to bring economic growth and investment above levels before the global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund said, Bloomberg reports. Capital inflows and easy access to credit fueled economic growth of more than 5 percent a year in Eastern Europe before the crisis that unfolded in 2008. Since then, bad loans have shot up and weigh on bank and company balance sheets. Worsening credit quality, many mortgages issued in euros and Swiss francs in the boom years turned sour when local currencies weakened. The IMF urged steps to tackle non-performing loans, relax labor markets and improve the business environment. Bulgaria, Croatia and Ukraine need the most debt adjustment, with companies in Latvia and Slovenia also at risk, it said. Growth in the Baltics and the European Union’s eastern nations will average 2.6 percent this year and 3.6 percent in 2016, the IMF predicts. The Balkan region will expand 1.9 percent in 2015 and 2.4 percent the following year, it said. As far as Romania is concerned, the Fund counts on a 2.7% increase this year and a 2.9% increase in 2016.
The Foreign Ministry in Bucharest on Monday announced it had completed the evacuation of the Romanians from war-torn Yemen. According to the Ministry, the last 5 Romanian citizens and a family member have been transported to Saudi Arabia. The Ministry mentions that 73 people, 62 Romanian citizens and 11 family members, have been evacuated from this country since the beginning of the crisis in Yemen.
Conservative Andrzej Duda, 42, surprisingly emerged as winner of the first round of the presidential election in Poland, outrunning incumbent center-to-right president Bronislaw Komorowski, 62. According to exit polls made public by the Election Committee, the opposition’s candidate, Andrzej Duda has mustered 36.7 % of the votes, whereas Komorowski reaped only 31.9%. Former rock star Pavel Kukiz, a candidate with a radical ideology, is ranking third with 21%. The Polish went to the polls on Sunday to cast their ballot in the first round of the presidential race, whose main favourite, according to opinion polls, was Komorowski. If neither man secures an outright majority, the two will be competing in a run off voting due on May 24th.
30 people, including 18 ethnic Albanians were indicted for terrorism on Monday, following the last week’s violent incidents in Kumanovo, at the border with Kosovo, where police troops clashed with unidentified gunmen. According to the prosecutors, most of the attackers had entered Macedonia illegally. The gravest violent events in the former Yugoslav republic in the past 14 years have raised concern in the UN, EU, the USA and NATO, which made an appeal to restrain. 22 people are reported to have died in the clashes, 8 Macedonian police and 14 gunmen. The clashes come against a deep political crisis currently facing Macedonia, which has been a formal EU accession candidate for the past decade.
US Secretary of State, John Kerry will be meeting Russian president Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Tuesday; high on the agenda are bilateral and regional issues, such as the situation in Iran, Syria and Ukraine, the US Department of State announced on Monday. This is Kerry’s first visit to Russia in the past two years, at a time when the relations between the two countries are the worst since the end of the Cold War. Following the visit to Russia, John Kerry on Wednesday will be attending a summit that is to bring together Foreign Ministers from NATO member countries. High on the summit’s agenda is the situation in eastern Ukraine. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Monday that Moscow and pro-Russia rebels had improved military capabilities and are now able to launch new attacks with very littel warning time.
