October 5, 2022 UPDATE
A roundup of local and international news
Newsroom, 05.10.2022, 19:28
PARTNERSHIP – The Partnership Agreement between the European Commission and Romania for the period 2021-2027 was signed on Wednesday in Alba Iulia, central Romania, by the European Commissioner for Cohesion and Reforms, Elisa Ferreira, Romanian PM Nicolae Ciuca and the Minister of Investment and European Projects, Marcel Bolos. PM Ciuca said that under this partnership Romania will benefit financial resources for sustainable development, worth around 45 billion euros of which 31 billions are European funds and 14 billion are local funds. The money will be invested in transport infrastructure, healthcare, sustainable development, digitization, education and social inclusion.
FIREWOOD – The prices of firewood and wood derivatives used for heating will be capped in Romania at around 40 euros per cubic meter. A draft emergency order in this respect was passed by the Cabinet on Wednesday. Beneficiaries will include individuals, public and private education institutions, social service providers, local authorities and places of worship. The measure is intended to help Romanians cope this winter with the skyrocketing fuel, energy and natural gas prices. Also on Wednesday the government decided to support the neighboring Moldova by sending some 130.000 cubic meters of firewood to the country.
INFLATION — The annual inflation rate will probably continue to go up towards the end of the year under the impact of shocks in terms of offer, but at a much slower pace, the National Bank of Romania announced in a release on Wednesday. The upward trend of the inflation rate is generated by the big fluctuations in the price of natural gas and electricity and the high price of food products. The annual inflation rate reached 15.32% in August.
NOBEL – The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 to Americans Carolyn R. Bertozzi and K. Barry Sharpless and the Dutch Morten Meldal, “for the development of click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry”. According to a release of the Swedish Academy, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2022 is about making difficult processes easier. Barry Sharpless and Morten Meldal have laid the foundation for a functional form of chemistry — click chemistry — in which molecular building blocks, snap together quickly and efficiently. Carolyn Bertozzi has taken click chemistry to a new dimension and started using it in living organisms. This is the second Nobel Prize for Barry Sharpless who also received one in 2001.
ENERGY – A Pact for Clean Energy Resilience was launched in Romania on Tuesday. The initiative came from Smart Energy Association and is an invitation to the authorities and private sector to implement programmes and awareness raising campaigns regarding the need to cut energy consumption and to use clean energy sources. The president of the Association, Dumitru Chisăliţă, says cutting consumption should be achieved not through restrictive measures, but rather by improving efficiency. The Association also released a guideline for authorities, comprising energy saving solutions.
SCHENGEN — The Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU will try to obtain, at the summit in December, unanimity as regards Romania’s and Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen area, The Czech Minister of European Affairs, Mikulas Bek told Wenesday the European Parliament’s plenary. He also said that next week visits of the European experts to Romania and Bulgaria will start. In turn, the European Commissioner Vice President for Promoting Our European Way of Life, Margaritis Schinas, reminded that the two countries have met the technical criteria for accession ever since 2011. Initially set for March 2011, the two countries’ accession to the Schengen passport-free travel area has been postponed on a number of occasions due to the opposition of some member states that invoked the lack of reform of the justice system. (EE)
