May 17, 2023 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 17.05.2023, 19:46

Strike – In Romania, education employees will go on an all-out strike as of Monday. The meeting that the leaders of the main education trade union federations had, on Wednesday, in Bucharest, with the liberal Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and the leader of the Social Democratic Party – PSD, Marcel Ciolacu, did not produce any results that convinced the representatives of the employees to give up the protest, the president of the Federation of Trade Unions, Simion Hăncescu, announced. In turn, the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă said that there would be a new discussion on Monday. Education employees organized a two-hour warning strike on Wednesday. The unions announced that the protest is a stage in the labor conflict generated by the low wages and the lack of investments in the field. The National Federation of Parents Associations in the pre-university education system supports the teachers approach and understands their grievances, but specifies that the initiation of the all-out strike would harm the students, especially those in the final years.

Diplomacy – Romania is deeply committed to combating any form of extremism and hate speech at home and anywhere in the world and supports all the European projects dedicated to combating anti-Semitism. The statement was made on Wednesday morning by the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, at ​​the solemn joint session of the Romanian Parliament marking 75 years of uninterrupted diplomatic relations between Romania and the State of Israel. “Israel is one of Romanias strongest and most important partners in the Middle East, but also the state with which we have an increasingly strengthened economic relationship. I think, however, that the potential of commercial exchanges is much higher”, Nicolae Ciucă said. Present at the meeting in Bucharest, the Speaker of the Israeli Parliament, Amir Ohana, stated that Romania was one of the first countries to recognize the State of Israel and took important steps to commemorate the Holocaust, which demonstrates its commitment to combating anti-Semitism. According to Amir Ohana, the ties between Romania and Israel are “better than ever”.

Summit — The Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis, participated, in Reykjavik, between May 16-17, in the 4th Summit of the Council of Europe, held during the mandate of the Presidency of Iceland. On Wednesday, he delivered a speech during the general debate “United for Europe”. On the other hand, Klaus Iohannis said that Russias aggression against Ukraine must remain a central point on the organizations agenda. He pointed out that Romania fully supported the Reykjavik Declaration, adopted at the end of the summit, which reconfirms the particular role of the Council of Europe in the multilateral architecture at the European and international level. At the same time, the establishment of the International ‘Register of Damage’ caused by the aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, in which Romania participates as a founding state, was also announced in Reykjavik. Also on Wednesday, the Romanian head of state had a series of bilateral meetings, on the sidelines of the Summit, with his counterparts from the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovenia.

Conference – The Chief of the Romanian Defense Staff, General Daniel Petrescu, participates, between May 17 and 19, in the 16th edition of the Conference of the Chiefs of the Defense Staffs from the Balkans on military cooperation issues, organized in Sofia, in neighboring Bulgaria. According to Romanian Defense Ministry, the agenda of the forum includes analyzes of the security situation in the Balkan area, as well as methods of collaboration between the states in the region. At the same time, General Daniel Petrescu will have a bilateral meeting with his Turkish counterpart. The forum takes place annually and brings together the chiefs of defense staffs from nine countries in South-Eastern Europe: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Turkey. The forum aims to boost regional military cooperation by strengthening security and ensuring a climate of stability in the Balkan region, to identify and develop a regional crisis management mechanism and joint participation in exercises to increase the interoperability of the armed forces in the region. Defense chiefs from Croatia and Slovenia, as well as high-level representatives of NATO and the EU, are also invited to this edition of the conference.

CCR – The Constitutional Court of Romania (CCR) decided on Wednesday that the crime of abuse of office can be criminalized even without a value threshold, the judge being the one who can decide on the seriousness of the act. The Court rejected as unfounded the objection of unconstitutionality formulated by the High Court of Cassation and Justice regarding the criminalization of abuse of office without a value threshold. At the same time, the Court decided that the Romanian Intelligence Service’s interceptions cannot be used as evidence obtained on national security warrants also in the case of corruption cases. We remind you that, initially, the Senate established a value threshold of 250,000 lei (approx. 50,000 Euros) for criminalizing abuse of office, but following the scandal caused in the public space, the Justice Minister, Cătălin Predoiu, proposed a new threshold of 9,000 lei (approx. 1,800 Euros). Later, the Legal Committee of the Chamber of Deputies gave up the threshold, and the plenum adopted the draft law that amends the Criminal Code and refers to abuse and negligence in office without any threshold. (LS)