October 3, 2022

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 03.10.2022, 13:55

Education.
President Klaus Iohannis said on Monday that the new education laws must
contain explicit provisions with respect to the prevention of and the penalties
for plagiarism, emphasising that this is a toxic phenomenon in the education
environment. He made these remarks as he attended the opening of the new
university year at the Bucharest University of Architecture and Urbanism. The
president also said that obtaining an academic diploma is an honour and is
exclusively conditional on real merits. An educated Romania will have to be a
fair Romania, with no exceptions. Almost half a million students began the new
university year in Romania, at a time when the education minister resigned amid
accusations of plagiarism and the new education law is still to be passed.

Energy.
The Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest is this week due to finalise debates on a
government emergency order about energy. The bill has already been adopted by
the Senate with a number of amendments, including extending the cap on
electricity and natural gas prices by the end of August next year to families
with more than three children, officially recognised religious establishments
and medicine producers. Other non-household beneficiaries of the price cap
include small and medium sized companies, public utility services and businesses
in the food industry. Also this week, Romanian deputies are scheduled to vote
on the final bill of a package of laws relating to the justice system, namely
referring to the status of magistrates. The Senate will begin debates within a
specialist committee on a bill on the organisation of the Superior Council of
Magistracy.

Visit. The British minister of state for Europe Leo Docherty is today paying an official visit to
Bucharest to reaffirm the UK’s commitment to protecting
European security and strengthening close relations with
Romania. According to a statement from the UK embassy in Bucharest, as a sign
of solidarity with a key NATO ally, the British official will hail the close
cooperation with Romania in the field of regional defence and the continuous
support to Ukraine in response to the war waged against it by the Russian
Federation. The UK and Romania are important NATO allies who firmly oppose
Putin’s brutal attack on Ukraine, the British official said ahead of the visit.
He is due to meet Romanian senior officials as well as British officers of the NATO
force in Romania and representatives of British companies.

Refugees. The Romanian border police said almost
95,000 people crossed the border into Romania on Sunday, including some 8,900
Ukrainian citizens, which accounted for around 16% fewer than on the previous
day. Since February 10th 2022, prior to the beginning of the
conflict in the neighbouring Ukraine, almost 2.5 million refugees crossed the
border into Romania, most of them only transiting the country.

Cars.
Although the world car industry was strongly hit by the global semiconductor chip
shortage, with losses to companies in the field amounting to 100 billion euros,
the car manufacturing industry in Romania saw a growth rate of over 15%, while
car sales grew by 5% in the first 8 months of the year compared with the same
period in 2021, according to a study published today. With chip supply chains
still at threat, state support should remain high for this sector, which makes
up more than 25% of GDP, the study also writes. Romania is home to two big car
manufacturing plants: the Ford factory in Craiova, in the south-west, and the
Dacia-Renault factory in Mioveni, in the south of the country.

Domestic
abuse. The first two electronic wristbands to track the whereabouts of two men
who have aggressed their partners are in operation in Romania. This is the
first stage of a system to monitor aggressive persons and is for the time being
only implemented in three counties around the country and the capital
Bucharest, with countrywide implementation expected in three years’ time. The
wristband emits an alert signal when the aggressor comes too close to the
victim, and the signal is transmitted to the emergency service. Domestic
violence is a serious and growing problem in Romania. According to police
records, almost 37,000 such reports have been filed in the first 8 months of
the year, 13% more than in the same period last year. Actual figures can be
much higher, however, given that many cases are not reported. (CM)