{"id":102401,"date":"2017-12-05T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-05T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devrri.freshlemon.ro\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/december-5-2017-update-102401.html"},"modified":"2024-02-15T20:12:59","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T18:12:59","slug":"december-5-2017-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/december-5-2017-update-id102401.html","title":{"rendered":"December 5, 2017 UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><\/strong><strong><\/strong><strong>MOURNING: <\/strong>Romania&#8217;s last king, Mihai I, 96, passed away at his residence in&#13;<br \/>\nSwitzerland. He was the last of the four sovereigns of the&#13;<br \/>\nHohenzollern-Sigmaringen German dynasty which ascended the throne in Bucharest&#13;<br \/>\nin 1866 and built modern Romania. Born on October 25, 1921, Mihai was enthroned&#13;<br \/>\nin 1940, after the abdication of his father, Carol II. On August 23, 1944,&#13;<br \/>\nduring WWII, he ordered the arrest of the de facto leader of the country,&#13;<br \/>\nMarshal Ion Antonescu, Romania&#8217;s withdrawal from the alliance with Nazi Germany&#13;<br \/>\nand subsequently declared an alliance with its traditional allies, the United&#13;<br \/>\nStates and Great Britain. According to historians, this decision shortened the&#13;<br \/>\nwar by at least six months and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Three&#13;<br \/>\nyears later, when the country was practically under Soviet military occupation&#13;<br \/>\nand was led by a puppet communist government, the King was forced to abdicate&#13;<br \/>\nand to live in exile in the West. The sovereign was allowed to return to&#13;<br \/>\nRomania only after the 1989 anti-communist Revolution,  regained Romanian&#13;<br \/>\ncitizenship that he had been stripped of by the communists and some of his&#13;<br \/>\nproperties. King Mihai promoted, as a special ambassador, in the big western&#13;<br \/>\nchancelleries, Romania&#8217;s accession to NATO in 2004 and to the EU, in&#13;<br \/>\n2007. His first born, the eldest of his five daughters, Princess&#13;<br \/>\nMargareta, is King Mihai&#8217;s successor at the helm of the Royal House and the&#13;<br \/>\nCustodian of the Crown. With endless love and strong principles, King&#13;<br \/>\nMihai wrote the most valuable page of contemporary history in the Book of the&#13;<br \/>\nRomanian Nation, Princess Margareta said in a televised declaration to the&#13;<br \/>\ncountry. The earthly remains of King Mihai will lie in state at Peles Castle in&#13;<br \/>\nSinaia, the southern Carpathians, for two days, and then at the Throne Hall of&#13;<br \/>\nthe Royal Palace in Bucharest. The funeral will be held at Curtea de Arges,&#13;<br \/>\nsouthern Romania, the last resting place of the Romanian kings. <\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><strong>PRESIDENCY<\/strong> \u2013President Klaus Iohannis, said on Tuesday that Romanias accession to the Euro zone and the Schenghen area continue to be major objectives of the country. The declaration was made before the ambassadors of the EU member states accredited to Bucharest, during a meeting hosted by the Embassy of Estonia, a country which is currently holding the half-yearly rotating presidency of the EU Council. On that occasion, the president also expressed Romanias readiness to contribute to consolidating the European project, the more so as the country will hold the presidency of the EU Council in the first half of 2019. At domestic level, president Iohannis reiterated his firm commitment to consolidate the independence of the judiciary and to continue the fight against corruption. The agenda of talks also covered such issues as Brexit and the informal summit of the European leaders due in May 2019 in Sibiu, central Romania.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><strong>FOREIGN AFFAIRS<\/strong>\u2013 Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu on Tuesday and Wednesday attends the Brussels meeting of the NATO foreign ministers. According to a ministry press release, this is a major event in preparation for the summit of July 2018. The main areas being covered in the meeting will be security issues of relevance to the alliance, as well as the role of NATO in projecting stability, including the threat of terrorism. The participants will also exchange opinions on the open door policy and optimal solutions in supporting candidate states. Participating is also the US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who reassured NATO member states that the United States is committed to Europe&#8217;s security.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><strong>TAX HAVENS<\/strong> \u2013 The 28 EU finance ministers, who gathered in Brussels on Tuesday, adopted a black list of fiscal havens in 17 jurisdictions outside the EU which do not cooperate on fiscal and taxation-related issues. The list includes, among others, South Korea, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates, Namibia, Panama and Bahrain. These countries run the risk of loosing access to European funds. Other possible measures will be made public next week. 47 other jurisdictions are included on a so-called \u201cgray list, including countries which have pledged to improve fiscal and tax practices. Some of the member states, including Romania, stand for tough sanctions.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><strong style=line-height: 1.6em;>ANTI-CORRUPTION -&#13;<br \/>\n<\/strong><span style=line-height: 1.6em;>Former interior minister, Cristian David, on Tuesday was sentenced by the high&#13;<br \/>\nCourt of Cassation and Justice to five year imprisonment, in a file in which he&#13;<br \/>\nis accused of having taken a 500,000 Euro bribe. According to the National&#13;<br \/>\nAnti-corruption Directorate, in 2007, in his capacity as interior minister,&#13;<br \/>\nCristian David used his influence for the issuance of a property title for a 15-hectare&#13;<br \/>\nplot of land in Buzau, <\/span><span style=line-height: 19.2px;>south-eastern<\/span><span style=line-height: 1.6em;> Romania. The sentence is not final. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong style=line-height: 1.6em;><br \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong style=line-height: 1.6em;>ECONOMY<\/strong> \u2013 Household spending has been the main driver of the 7% growth of the Romanian economy in the first three quarters of 2017, against the same period of 2016. According to the National Statistics Institute, between January and September of this year, the GDP amounted to 696 billion lei, around 151 billion Euro. Beginning in November, the National Prognosis Commission adjusted upwards its 6.1% growth estimate regarding economic growth in 2017. The European Commission also adjusted upwards its estimates for economic growth in Romania this year, at the same time warning that uncertainties in terms of executive policies may adversely affect economic growth. The IMF expects that the Romanian economy grow by 5.5% in 2017.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p><strong>EDUCATION <\/strong>\u2013 18% of Romanian youth graduate basic education, according to the latest data from the EU, presented on Tuesday in Bucharest. Director General of the Institute of Education Sciences in Romania, Ciprian Fartu\u015fnic, said that this drop out rate is almost double the figure that the authorities were aiming for. He also remarked that Romania has the lowest rate of investment in education among European Union countries, around 3% of the GDP. There is also a huge gap between urban and rural environments in terms of education, and also between categories of students, with a disproportionate lack of education among the poor and among children with disabilities or children belonging to the Rroma minority.  (Translated by D. Vijeu and C. Cotoiu) <\/p>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Romania mourns its last king, Mihai I, who passed away at 96 years of age<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":67699,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[29212,28904,30060,28945,32862,32863,31448],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-102401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-king-mihai-i","tag-klaus-iohannis","tag-romanias-last-sovereign","tag-tax-haven","tag-teodor-melescanu"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>December 5, 2017 UPDATE - Radio Romania International<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/december-5-2017-update-id102401.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"December 5, 2017 UPDATE - 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