May 13, 2025 UPDATE
A roundup of local and world news
Daniel Bilț, 13.05.2025, 20:08
PNRR On June 10th Romania will be getting the third installment of the National Programme of Recovery and Resilience PNRR worth 1.3 billion Euros. The announcement was made in Brussels by the Finance Minister, who says the money will contribute to offsetting the returns at the state budget. Tanczos Barna has underlined that Romania needs a fiscal reform, but an interim government has neither the prerogatives nor a mandate to tackle such aspects. The Executive intends to negotiate certain amendments to the process of unfolding the PNRR so as to reduce the risk for Romania to lose part of the allotted funds. Romania has so far received 9.2 billion Euros out of the 28.5 billion available for the implementation of the PNRR. Out of the sum, 13.6 billion Euros represents grants and 14.9 billion loans. We’ll have more on this after the news.
FAIR Over May 15 and 19, Romania is attending the International Book Fair in Turin, northern Italy. According to a communiqué by the Romanian Cultural Institute quoted by the Bucharest media, the Romanian stand comes with a varied editorial offer and an attractive event schedule involving celebrities from Romania and the neighboring Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova. Under the motto, ‘La leggerezza del leggere – the Easiness of Reading’ the Romanian stand will be promoting contemporary literature as well as works by Romanian authors from fields such as philosophy, history, and literary criticism published in Italian in the past two years.
NEPTUN “The Bucharest Court did justice and the Neptun Deep project moves on” says the Romanian Energy Minister, Sebastian Burduja. In a social network post he says the justice defended Romania’s interests against the repeated attempts by the non-governmental organization Greenpeace to block the Neptun Deep project on natural gas exploitation at the Black Sea. The aforementioned NGO now has to pay the equivalent of 16 thousand Euros to gas developers Romgaz and OMV Petrom – the minister went on to say. In his opinion, the ruling has again confirmed that such actions against Romania’s strategic projects are either ungrounded or inadmissible. Burduja also says that such trials are wasting time, money and major opportunities for developments and national security. Greenpeace has tried to legally block the Neptun Deep project as it causes serious issues related to the environment, climate change and the field legislation.
VOTE Romania’s Permanent Election Authority on Tuesday announced the situation in terms of the number of eligible voters for the presidential runoff due on Sunday. The total number of voters in constituencies stands at 17,988,218. At the same time, the number of eligible voters abroad is around 1,016327. 6085 Romanian citizens with residence abroad have opted for postal voting and registered with the webpage www.votstrainatate.ro. We recall that the presidential runoff will be opposing the ultranationalist populist candidate George Simion, who represents the AUR party and the pro-western independent mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan. On May 4, in the first round, Simion got around 41% of the votes whereas Dan 21%. The Romanians abroad have three days to cast their ballots, May 16, 17 and 18, while in Romania, voters will go to the polls on Sunday, May 18.
(bill)
