{"id":104935,"date":"2021-02-24T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-24T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/devrri.freshlemon.ro\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/february-24-2021-update-104935.html"},"modified":"2024-02-15T20:50:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-15T18:50:39","slug":"february-24-2021-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rri.ro\/en\/news-and-current-affairs\/newsflash\/february-24-2021-update-id104935.html","title":{"rendered":"February 24, 2021 UPDATE"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

COVID-19 IN ROMANIA – <\/strong>The vaccination of education
\nemployees, through school inspectorates, stared on Wednesday in Bucharest and
\nmost counties in Romania. The whole procedure will take until March 10 for the
\nfirst dose of vaccine, and authorities estimate that 60,000 people will be
\nimmunized during this period. So far, more than 42,000 teachers have already
\nbeen vaccinated through the specially created national online platform.
\nMeanwhile, about 80,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine have arrived in the
\ncountry on Wednesday, which will be stored to ensure boosters for those already
\nvaccinated with the first dose. Since the start of the vaccination campaign in
\nRomania on December 27, a total of almost 2 million doses of vaccine have been
\nreceived, most of them from Pfizer. The serum from AstraZeneca has also been
\nadministered in Romania for about ten days now. 3,300 new cases of coronavirus
\ninfection were reported on Wednesday, following some 34,000 tests run at
\nnational level. Another 73 related deaths have also been reported, and 1000
\npeople are in intensive care.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

COVID-19
\nIN THE WORLD<\/b> – Worldwide,
\nmore than 112 million people have been infected with the new coronavirus since
\nthe beginning of the pandemic, more than a year ago. About 88 million have been
\ncured, and nearly 2.5 million have died. The World Health Organization has
\nannounced that the death toll has fallen for three consecutive weeks, and the
\nnumber of confirmed cases of coronavirus has also continued to decline.
\nMeanwhile, European countries are making plans to ease restrictions and resume activities,
\nbut are acting cautiously against the more contagious strains of the new
\ncoronavirus. The European Commission has called on Belgium, Denmark, Finland,
\nGermany, Hungary and Sweden to drop restrictive measures imposed unilaterally
\nat the borders. The six states have ten days to justify the restrictions. In
\norder to curb the spread of the new variants, Italy is isolating more and more
\nlocalities. For its part, France has for the first time taken the measure of
\nterritorial isolation of the population.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

EUROPEAN
\nCOUNCIL<\/b> – Romania’s
\nPresident, Klaus Iohannis, on Thursday and Friday is attending the
\nextraordinary meeting of the European Council, held in videoconference format,
\nthe presidency reports. The agenda for talks includes elements pertaining to
\nthe coordination of the European Union in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
\nand actions in the healthcare sector. Moreover, EU leaders will tackle topics
\nin the field of security and defense, especially EU-wide cooperation and
\nEU-NATO complementarity and aspects related to the Southern Vicinity of the
\nEuropean Union. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

BUDGET <\/strong>–<\/strong>The specialized committees of
\nRomania’s parliament will start debates on the state and social security
\nbudgets for 2021 on Thursday afternoon, during which the parliamentary groups
\ncan submit amendments to the draft drawn up by the Government. The discussions
\nin the committees are expected to be completed by Saturday, and the vote in
\nplenary on the two documents to take place next Tuesday. The draft law for
\napproving the ceilings, which must be adopted before the state budget, will
\nalso be debated and voted according to a tight calendar. The document was
\nendorsed by the Senate and on Wednesday was voted by the Chamber of Deputies,
\nthe decision-making body on this matter. The ceilings bill sets the caps on
\ndeficits and staff expenditure. The document stipulates that the ceiling of the
\nbudget deficit will be 7.16% of the GDP this year, and personnel spending will
\nstand at 9.8%.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

PROTESTS<\/strong> – Trade union protests continue
\nin Romania. On Wednesday, protests organized by the PUBLISIND Federation,
\naffiliated to the National Trade Union Bloc, were staged in Bucharest and in
\nthe country’s prefectures against the freezing of salaries and bonuses, the
\nnon-indexation of pensions against inflation, and the lack of a minimum wage
\nincrease correlated with rising prices. PUBLISIND has members from the police,
\nborder and penitentiary police, central and local public administration, social
\nassistance, court registry, sports and youth, finance and financial or environmental
\ncontrol. Also on Wednesday, the Meridian National Trade Union Confederation and
\nthe Federation of Railway Transport Trade Unions in Romania protested in front
\nof the transport ministry headquarters. Meanwhile, the miners who blocked
\nthemselves in the underground of the Lupeni coal mine, in the Jiu Valley
\n(center-west), ended the protest that had started six days earlier, after they
\nwere informed about the provisions of the agreement, concluded by their leaders
\nand the Ministry of Labour, under which they will receive all outstanding
\nsalaries and other benefits they are entitled to. Prime Minister Florin C\u00ee\u0163u
\nsaid the Government has adopted a decision whereby all the payments stipulated in
\nthe collective employment agreement, tantamount to some \u20ac2.25 million, will be
\npaid. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

SPECIAL PENSIONS – <\/strong>President Klaus Iohannis has
\npromulgated the law eliminating the special pensions for senators and deputies.
\nThe law was endorsed by Parliament last week. All parties, except the
\nDemocratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, which abstained, voted in favour of the
\nbill initiated by the Social Democratic Party to eliminate special pensions.
\nThe President of the Chamber of Deputies, Ludovic Orban, has stated that this
\nis just the first step. We will have to fearlessly attack all the
\nlegislation in the field, in order to eventually make sure that all pensions in
\nRomania are established based on the principle of contribution, Ludovic
\nOrban said. 800 former MPs benefit from these special pensions, amounting to
\nsome \u20ac10 million a year, paid from the state budget.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n


\n
\n
\n <\/p>\n

POSEIDON 21 –<\/strong> Over 700 soldiers, 13 military
\nships, 9 aircraft, a pyrotechnic intervention truck and a remote-controlled
\nunderwater robot will be deployed during the ‘Poseidon 21’ exercise organized
\nby the Romanian Naval Forces between February 26 and March 6. It is the first
\nmultinational exercise in 2021 in the Black Sea. Forces and means from
\nBulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, Spain, USA and Turkey will participate. With
\na high degree of complexity, ‘Poseidon 21’ is included in the NATO Training
\nProgram proposed by Romania at the NATO Summit in Warsaw, in 2016, to strengthen
\nsecurity measures on the European south-eastern flank, as well as to ensure a
\ncontinuous presence in the Black Sea region. (M.I. & V.P.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A roundup of domestic and international news<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":75903,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[36061,35374,28997,28945,36063,29669,32585,32305],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-104935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsflash","tag-2021-budget-law","tag-covid-19","tag-european-council","tag-klaus-iohannis","tag-poseidon-21","tag-special-pensions","tag-trade-union-protests","tag-vaccination-campaign"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nFebruary 24, 2021 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\/february-24-2021-update-id104935.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"February 24, 2021 UPDATE - 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