INVITATION Romania’s Prime
\nMinister Viorica Dancila has been invited to present before Parliament on June
\n20th the stage of the preparation process for Romania’s taking over
\nthe half-yearly rotating presidency of the EU Council in January 2019. The
\ndebates occasioned by the event could provide a considerable support in the
\ngovernment’s process of drawing up and implementing the first blueprint of a
\npresidency’s working road map – the head of the Romanian government has added.
\nThe Romanian official believes the EU Council’s presidency will be an
\nopportunity for Romania to prove its ability to contribute in a significant
\nmanner, through a powerful vision and a relevant administrative capacity, to
\nthe process of kick-starting the European project. <\/p>\n
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WB Over 80% of Romania’s
\nunder-performing schools are located in the country’s rural areas, with a
\ngraduation rate in the tertiary education that exceeds 25.6%, the EU’s lowest,
\na WB report on development in 2018 says. According to the document, made public
\nin Bucharest on Wednesday by the WB lead economist and co-author of the report,
\nHalsey Rogers, the differences between the dropout rates are contrasting; the
\nrural dropout rate stays at 26.6%, whereas the dropout rate in the cities is
\naround 6.2%. Romania needs to invest more intelligently in education, the
\nreport also points out. The World Bank recommends competence assessment in
\nRomania’s case as employers are presently deploring the shortage of key
\nsocial-emotional competences, such as motivation, teamwork and responsibility.
\nGraduates from Romania’s higher education system are generally perceived as
\nowners of exclusively theoretical knowledge while graduates from the country’s
\nvocational training system have only developed obsolete competences.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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TALKS The Foreign
\nMinistry in Bucharest has announced that it held talks with Ukrainian officials
\non the searches recently conducted at the Romanian Cultural Centre ‘Eudoxiu
\nHurmuzachi’ in Cernauti, western Ukraine. Emphasis was laid during the talks on
\nthe observation of the rights of the Romanian minority living in this country.
\nDuring the talks hosted by the Foreign Ministry on Monday, the Ukrainian
\nambassador in Bucharest Oleksandr Bankov was requested additional information
\non how the aforementioned searches had been conducted – Romanian diplomacy
\nsources have informed. Bucharest has called on the Ukrainian authorities to
\nensure the observation of the Romanian minority’s rights and avoid any actions,
\nwhich could lead to their violation or to their being interpreted as elements
\nof intimidation. These specifications come after Ukraine’s Security Service
\n(SBU) has announced that it is conducting investigations involving the board of
\nthe cultural center on what it describes as ‘appeals to the violation of the
\ncountry’s territorial integrity’. Roughly half a million ethnic Romanians are
\nliving in the neighboring country, most of them on the territories annexed by
\nthe Soviet Union in 1940 following an ultimatum and taken over by Ukraine as a
\nsuccessor state in 1991. <\/p>\n
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COMMEMORATION Romania is these days
\ncommemorating 28 years since the violent events, which are now known as the
\nMiners’ Raid to Bucharest over June 13th-15th 1990. The
\nraid put an end to a large-scale protest rally
\nagainst the left-wing government, which had come to power after the
\ndemise of the communist regime in Romania. Against the background of some
\nviolent events in the capital Bucharest, which the army troops had already
\nmanaged to contain, Ion Iliescu, the country’s president at the time, invoked an
\nattempted coup by the far right political forces and called on the citizens to
\ndefend Romania’s democratic institutions. Miners from the Jiu Valley in central
\nRomania arrived in Bucharest and stormed the University building, the head
\noffices of the opposition parties as well as some independent publications.
\nFour people were killed and over one thousand abusively arrested. Romania’s
\ninternational image was seriously tarnished by the violent events in 1990. A
\ncourt file on the Miners’ Raid was reopened in 2015 and the General
\nProsecutor’s Office sent to court several high-ranking officials such as the
\ncountry’s former president Ion Iliescu, former Premier Petre Roman and the head
\nof the country’s Intelligence Service, Virgil Magureanu. One of the charges they
\nare facing is crimes against humanity. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
(translated by bill)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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