May 25, 2023

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 25.05.2023, 14:14

DAY The Ministry of National Defence is
today staging a series of military and religious services devoted to the Heroes
Day celebrated every year on the Ascension Day in Romania. Romanian President
Klaus Iohannis together with the country’s Minister of Defence, Angel Tîvăr are going to attend a series
of ceremonies at the Heroes’ Monument near Sibiu, in central Romania, and the
president of the Chamber of Deputies, Marcel Ciolacu, is expected to give a
speech during the ceremony at the Heroes Graveyard in Buzau, southern Romania.
The Heroes Day will also be celebrated by Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae
Ciuca at the Monument of the Unknown Soldier in the Carol 1st Park
in Bucharest. The Heroes Day was first observed on May 4th 1920 and
was taken over by the Romanian Parliament in 1995. It became a national day of
the Romanian people in 2003.

STRIKE Romanian teachers are carrying
on their all-out strike, after trade unions in education have turned down the
latest government offer, which they deem as insulting. Several thousand
teachers are protesting in front of the government building in Bucharest. Representatives
of the government and trade union leaders last night attended a new round of
talks which ended in a deadlock. The authorities ruled out any pay rises and bonuses
claimed by the trade unions. However, teachers were supposed to get 25 hundred
lei in two installments this year and the non-teaching staffers 1000 lei.
Marian Neacsu, the government’s Secretary General, explained the money would be
given on a special card for professional career and gave assurances that the
field of education would be a top priority in the future process of drafting
the payment law. Disgruntled with the pay and their working conditions, employees
of Romania’s education system kicked off an all-out strike on May 22. Trade
union leaders have announced their intention not to give up the protest unless
their claims are met.

EU The European Commission
Executive Vice-president, Valdis Dombrovskis on Wednesday called on the member
states to apply more effectively their plans of recovery and resilience, to
make investment and cut on spending. The European Commission has again drawn
attention to the economic situation in Romania, the only EU country for which
the procedure for excessive deficit has been activated. According to Brussels,
Romania spends more money than it has and must cut its deficit under 3% by the
next year. According to the government in Bucharest, the budget deficit is
expected to go down under 4.4% of the GDP this year and 2.9% next year. We have
more on the issue after the news.

CUP Sepsi OSK Sfantu Gheorghe won
Romania’s football cup after a 5-4 win against Universitatea Cluj in the
shootouts on Wednesday. 120 minutes into the game, the score was nil-all. The
hero of Sepsi was its goalkeeper, Roland Niczuly, a former player of the
Universitatea Cluj’s. Niczuly managed to save three shots, after Universitatea had got
the upper hand but wasted two chances. Sepsi has won the trophy for the second
time in a row. We recall that this ambitious football side from central Romania,
lost the finals of the aforementioned competition in 2020. Universitatea has
lost a Romanian Cup finals for the fifth time.

VISIT ‘A genuine war is going on in Europe at present’ the
president of the Federal Republic of Germany, Franz Walter Steinmeier said on
Thursday during the visit he is paying to Romania. The German official has
reiterated his appeal to unity in this context. During the second day of his
state visit jointly with his Romanian counterpart Klaus Iohannis he met
representatives of the German community in Romania. The two officials are going
to visit the National College ‘Samuel von Brukenthal’ in Sibiu with tuition in
German, a school first documented 650 years ago. The two presidents will be
attending a formal lunch offered by the incumbent mayor of Sibiu, Astrid Fodor.
The last stage of the German president’s visit in the region is going to be the
Saxon fortified church in the village of Cristian, a monument dating back to
the 13th century. Steinmeier will next visit the city of Timisoara,
in western Romania to lay a wreath of flowers at the monument dedicated to the
anti-communist revolution of 1989 in front of the Metropolitan Cathedral.

(bill)