September 11, 2015 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news.

Newsroom, 11.09.2015, 12:15

The Romanian deputy prime minister and interior minister Gabriel Oprea will attend the extraordinary meeting of the Justice and Home Affairs Council on Monday in Brussels. The Council will establish a further course of action for dealing with the current migration crisis. The Council will be debriefed by a number of EU and United Nations agencies on the latest information on migratory flows and the situation on the ground. Ministers will also be informed about the progress made in implementing the most recent EU measures, aimed at saving lives at sea, improving management of migratory flows and other measures. The Council will also hear a presentation by the European Commission on its new proposals on migration. The Romanian deputy prime minister will present Romanias willingness to host 1,705 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece and another 80 people form outside the EU. Moreover, Gabriel Oprea will reject the compulsory quotas imposed on the EU member sates by the European Commission, according to which Romania would have to host over 6 thousand migrants. On Friday in Prague, Poland the Chech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary also rejected the imposed migrant quotas, something that Denmark also announced it would do. However, the German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier said this crisis might be the greatest challenge in EU history and called on the EU countries to stay united to be able to handle it.

The Vishegrad Group foreign ministers- of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia-who met in Prague with their counterparts from Germany and Luxembourg, for talks on the migrant crisis, rejected the refugee quotas set by the EU. Romania has expressed reticence with the so-called mandatory quotas of immigrants, that the EU member states will give shelter to. In another move, Hungary announced on Friday that it supplemented by 3,800 the number of military deployed on the border with Serbia, to cope with the growing flow of immigrants, which Thursday night registered a record high of 3,600 people. Austria also announced it closed the Nickelsdorf checkpoint, on the border with Hungary, because of the high number of immigrants, some 8,000, who crossed the border within 24 hours. According to an official with the UN High Commissioners Office for Refugees, over 7,600 other refugees entered Macedonia, coming from Greece, in the last 24 hours.

Romania is further firmly committed to the international effort to fight terrorism and extremism, Romanian deputy prime minister and interior minister Gabriel Oprea said on Friday, in a message delivered on the occasion of the commemoration of 14 years since the 9/11 terror attacks in the US. According to Oprea, the terror attacks in the US and in other European countries have shown that terrorism can hit anywhere anytime and that no country is safe from this scourge. The relationship between Romania and US gained a new significance in the wake of the September 11 tragedy, Romanian foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu said. In a message to US Secretary of State, John Kerry, Minister Aurescu reiterated Romanias determination to carry on, alongside the US and its international partners, the efforts meant to prevent and fight this threat, irrespective of its forms of manifestation. He evoked the significant role of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the US in boosting bilateral relations and ensuring common security and stability in the Euro-Atlantic region.

The prime minister of the Republic of Moldova, a former Soviet state with a predominantly Romanian speaking population, Valeriu Streletz, has said his countrys existence is in danger. In the context of almost seven days of antigovernment protests in the capital city Chishinau, the prime minister said that his cabinet, which took office in late July, will resign only after a no-confidence vote in Parliament. On Sunday, tens of thousands of people protested near the government building, demanding the resignation of the cabinet and of president Nicolae Timofti and calling for early elections. Hundreds of them decided to stage protests around the clock, placing tents in front of the government building. Declaring itself of pro-Western orientation, the three-party ruling coalition dramatically lost credibility in Moldova, after the disappearance of one million US dollars from the countrys banking system, the equivalent of 15% of Moldovas GDP.