April 21, 2015 UPDATE
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
Bogdan Matei, 21.04.2015, 12:05
The president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, believes the legislation on elections and on the funding of political parties has made satisfactory progress in Parliament, but that the law on diaspora voting is lagging. In a Facebook post, after Monday’s consultations with the leaders of parliamentary parties, the head of state said around 4 million Romanians live abroad, and many of them queued for hours at the presidential elections of November 2014, in order to cast their ballots. Klaus Iohannis announced that he was closely monitoring the legislation in this field, and that he expects parliamentary parties to keep their promises.
Writer and former journalist Tatiana Niculescu Bran announced on Tuesday that she stepped down as spokesperson for the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis. In a news release, she explains she did not have the kind of cooperation she would have liked with the mass media. Niculescu Bran adds that she will continue to support Iohannis’s project for the country, regardless of her professional relations with the presidential administration. Appointed on December 22nd, 2014, on the first day of the presidential term in office, she had previously worked for the BBC and has written novels, plays and film scripts.
Anti-corruption prosecutors Tuesday charged the former minister for development Elena Udrea, with bribe taking, abuse of office and misuse of European funds. In the same case, concerning the organisation of a sports gala, seven other people are involved, including a former economy minister, Ion Ariton, and the former president of the Romanian Boxing Federation, Rudel Obreja. A politician close to former president of Romania Traian Basescu and viewed as the most influential of his aides, Elena Udrea is also probed into in other corruption cases. Also on Tuesday, prosecutors requested that the Chamber of Deputies approved the arrest pending trial of the Social Democrat Deputy Ion Ochi, for bribe taking and abuse of office.
Romania’s accession to the Eurozone on January 1, 2019, is a very ambitious goal, and authorities must think carefully before deciding whether to maintain this target, says the governor of the National Bank of Romania, Mugur Isarescu. He said Romania’s problem was that it fails to implement structural reforms. According to Isarescu, at present Bucharest meets all the nominal criteria for joining the Eurozone, but this is not enough, in the absence of real convergence. PM Victor Ponta also said Romania currently fulfils the nominal criteria, but it also needs to fulfil the “true” criteria that have to do with the competitiveness of the economy and the agreement of the Eurozone countries.
The Romanian Foreign Ministry has warned Romanian citizens who intend to travel to Belgium that an all-out strike has been announced for Wednesday in public services. According to the Foreign Ministry, public transportation, railway schedules and postal services will be disrupted. The protest takes place concurrently with the strike of police forces at the Zaventem International Airport in Brussels, which started on Monday and will last the entire week. This will increase travel difficulties in Belgium. The Romanian Foreign Ministry also issued a travel warning regarding Germany, where the trade union of engine drivers announced a federal-level strike that will carry on until Friday morning.
The European Court for Human Rights Tuesday ruled against the Russian Federation in a case involving a citizen of the Republic of Moldova killed 3 years ago by a Russian soldier. The ECHR ordered that Russia should pay to the victim’s family 35,000 euros in compensation and 5,580 euro in court expenses. Aged 18, Vadim Pisari was shot dead in the morning of January 1, 2012, near a bridge over River Dniestr, which separates the breakaway region of Transdniestr from the Republic of Moldova. Chisinau started a criminal investigation, but the perpetrator was repatriated by the Russian authorities and later acquitted. Transdniestr split from the Republic of Moldova in 1992, after an armed conflict which left hundreds of people dead, and settled after the intervention of Russian troops on the separatists’ side. Russian forces are still deployed in the area, although at the OSCE summit in 1999 in Istanbul Moscow pledged to pull them out.
