COVID-19 ROMANIA – The Covid-19
\nvaccination campaign continues in Romania. 1.5 million doses have been used so
\nfar to vaccinate some 850 thousand people, mostly with Pfizer\/BioNTech. The
\nModerna and AstraZeneca vaccines have also been administered across the
\ncountry. The vaccination of education employees, through school inspectorates,
\nbegan on Wednesday in Bucharest and most counties. The whole procedure will
\ntake until March 10 for the first dose of vaccine, and authorities estimate
\nthat 60,000 people will be immunized during this period. So far, more than
\n42,000 teachers have already been vaccinated. On the other hand, almost 4,000
\nnew cases of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have been reported today,
\nfollowing about 37,000 tests run nationwide. In total, since the beginning of
\nthe pandemic in Romania, over 790,000 cases have been registered, and about 90%
\nof the patients have been cured. The total number of deaths has exceeded 20
\nthousand.<\/p>\n
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COVID-19 IN THE WORLD – The European
\nParliament’s Transport and Tourism Committee (TRAN) on Thursday passed a
\nresolution calling for the issuance of vaccination certificates for EU citizens.
\nThe document highlights a need for a new EU strategy on a safe, clean and more
\nsustainable tourism. MEPs want an EU-wide vaccination certificate, that could
\nbecome a viable alternative to PCR tests and quarantine measures, once there is
\nsufficient evidence vaccinated people don’t pass on the virus. Restrictions imposed to stop the spread of
\ncoronavirus infection have caused deep recessions in 2020 in the European
\nUnion, hitting in particular the south of the continent. In the world,
\naccording to worldometers, at least 113 million people have been infected with
\nthe new coronavirus so far. 2.5 million people have died and more than 88
\nmillion have been declared cured since the beginning of the pandemic a year
\nago.<\/p>\n
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BUDGETS – The state and
\nsocial security draft budgets have reached Romania’s Parliament. Coalition
\nleaders agreed the MPs representing the three parties will not file amendments
\nand will endorse the bills as they were submitted by the Executive. From the
\nopposition, the Social Democratic Party criticizes this year’s austerity budget
\nand has prepared lots of amendments. However, there is little chance for
\namendments to be accepted that will substantially change the two bills, because
\nParliament has already voted on the Law regarding the ceilings that set the
\nfinancial constrains for the two budgets. This year, the deficit cannot exceed
\n7.16% of the GDP, and personnel costs will have to stay below 9.8%. Most
\nministries have been allotted a higher budget than in 2020, so the idea of an
\nausterity budget is out of the question, Finance Minister Alexandru Nazare said
\non Tuesday. The plenary vote on the two draft budgets is scheduled for next
\nTuesday.<\/p>\n
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HOSPITALITY – The principle of
\n‘first come, first served’ has been removed from the Government Emergency
\nOrdinance on support measures for HoReCa companies, the Minister of Economy,
\nEntrepreneurship and Tourism, Claudiu N\u0103sui, said on Thursday. He has stressed
\nthat, following the removal of this principle, all eligible applicants,
\nregardless of when they applied, will receive funding. The Minister of Economy
\nhas also stated that this aid scheme is based on a budget of one billion lei
\n(approx. 200 million euros) and benefits the HoReCa sector in the form of
\ngrants in the amount of 20% of the calculation base, without exceeding 800,000
\neuro per enterprise. HoReCa entrepreneurs have repeatedly called for the
\nsituation of restaurants to stop being decided depending on the COVID incidence
\nrate. They recalled that the industry is on the verge of bankruptcy. <\/p>\n
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EUROPOL – The EUROPOL on
\nThursday announced that, as a result of searches conducted in France, Romania
\nand the Republic of Moldova, law enforcement officers in these countries
\narrested 38 people suspected of being part of a human trafficking network
\nexploiting people on construction sites. According to the EUROPOL’s website,
\nthe criminal network smuggled and registered Moldovan workers in France with
\nfake IDs, while keeping their real passports as guarantees. An investigation by the French Border Police as part
\nof the National Police, the Romanian Police and the Moldovan Police, supported
\nby Europol and Eurojust, led officers to dismantle an organized crime group
\ninvolved in migrant smuggling, human trafficking for labor exploitation,
\ndocument fraud, social benefit fraud and money laundering. The
\ninvestigation into the criminal network started in 2018 when officers in France
\nintercepted a van transporting ten irregular migrants. They were Moldovan
\nnationals and a number of them had counterfeit Romanian identity cards. The
\ncriminal group, organized by a Romanian national living in France, smuggled at
\nleast 40 Moldovan nationals to exploit them in the construction business in
\nFrance. This activity was extremely lucrative, with illegal profits estimated
\nat almost \u20ac14 million. Large construction and
\nrenovation companies were also involved in the criminal scheme. The suspects
\nlaundered the criminal assets through eight shell companies, most of them based
\nin France.<\/p>\n
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SCHOLARSHIPS – Starting next year, Romania will be
\ngranting 100 scholarships to young students from Belarus eager to enroll in
\nhigher education institutions in Romania. The scholarships will address BA, MA
\nor doctoral school programmes with teaching in Romania or an
\ninternationally-spoken language. This initiative allows Belarusian students,
\nincluding those expelled for political reasons or who consider themselves
\nthreatened by Minsk authorities, to further their studies in prestigious universities
\nin Romania. Through this decision Romania wants to contribute to supporting the
\nefforts of Belarusian civil society, thus meeting national and European foreign
\npolicy goals, the Foreign Ministry reports. (M.I. & V.P.)<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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