August 29, 2015 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Valentin Țigău, 29.08.2015, 12:15
A delegation of the Senate’s
Commission for Romanians Around the World is on a working visit in the Land of
Herta, Cernauti area, in Ukraine. The delegation will donate books and
computers to several schools in the areas inhabited by Romanians, on Romanian
Language Day, celebrated on August 31st. The senators will hold
talks with Ukrainian officials about the rights of the ethnic Romanians in
Ukraine. In a statement to Radio Romania, the Commission’s chairman, Senator
Marcel Bujor, said that ethnic Romanians in Ukraine have limited access to
education and media in their mother tongue, are faced with many difficulties in
preserving their religious identity and have no representation in parliament.
Also, the Ukrainian government refuses to accept double citizenship for these
ethnics.
The UN Secretary General, Ban
Ki-moon, believes that more efforts should be made to protect the lives of the
migrants who are trying to reach Europe and has called for a ‘collective
political response’. Ban Ki-moon took the stand following the hundreds of
deaths among immigrants reported in the past days. He has called on the
countries involved to extend the safe and legal migration channels. On
Thursday, 71 people, most likely Syrian, were found dead in a truck abandoned
on a highway in Austria. This week, the European Commission has announced it
will allocate an additional 1.5 million Euros for humanitarian aid in the
Western Balkans, which is faced with an unprecedented wave of immigrants.
Most of them are coming from conflict areas and are trying to cross the Balkans
in order to reach the Schengen area.
On Saturday, Hungarian police
officers stopped a car registered in Bulgaria and a truck with 10 Syrians and
11 Afghans on board. Following investigations, four Romanians were accused of
human trafficking. On Friday, the Romanian Foreign Ministry announced that 18
Romanians had been detained in Hungary under the same accusation, but in four
different cases.
During phone conversation
with the Russian president Vladimir Putin, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel
and the French president Francois Hollande reiterated their commitment to
observing the agreement in Minsk, the German Government announced on Saturday.
The parties have confirmed the fact that the agreement in Minsk is the
ground for improving the situation in
Donbas’ reads a communiqué issued by the government in Berlin. Also, the three
leaders reiterated the importance of holding a new meeting in the ‘Normandy
format’ in the near future.
Greek president Prokopis
Pavlopoulos has signed the decree to dissolve parliament and hold a snap
parliamentary election on September 20th. Previously, the members of
the transition government in Athens, headed by the first woman premier in the
history of Greece, Vassiliki Thanou, were sworn in. The former prime-minister,
Alexis Tsipras, who resigned last week, agrees with the date of September 20th
for early elections, but opposition parties, such as the conservative New
Democracy Party and the Popular Union Party would have preferred September the
27th, in order to benefit from a longer election campaign.
Interior and transport
ministers of nine European countries that are connected by high speed trains -
France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands,
Luxembourg and Switzerland – the line European Commissioners and the European
coordinator for the fight against terrorism are discussing in Paris means of
increasing security in trains. The meeting was planned following the terrorist
attack nine days ago on the train connecting Amsterdam to Paris. According to
the French Interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve, quoted by the Radio Romania
correspondent in Paris, simultaneous measures should be introduced in all the
EU member countries. The rail police could be authorized from now on to check
passengers’ IDs and luggage. The author of the attack on the Thalys train, the
Moroccan Ayoub El Khazanni was charged last week for attempted murder. He had
on him a Kalashnikov machine-gun, 9 chargers, a Luger pistol and a cutter.
Romania ranks
fourth, after Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic with regard to the number
of companies among the first top 500 in Central and Eastern Europe. In the 2014
classification, Romania is represented by 59 companies, as compared to 56 in
2013. Last year, the best ranking companies were Automobile Dacia, on the 17th
position, with a 4.2 billion Euro turnover and OMV Petrom, 18th
ranked, with a turnover of 3.68 billion Euros.
The 22nd George
Enescu International Festival starts
in Bucharest on Sunday evening with the Romanian Rhapsody no.1 by George
Enescu, performed by the Romanian Youth Orchestra. Conducting will be Kristjan
Yarvi, who at European level runs both the oldest Radio Orchestra and the
newest Youth Orchestra. Also participating will be violinist Sarah Chang and
the famous counter-tenor Max Emanuel Cencic. Some 2,500 foreign and 500
Romanian artists will participate in the Enescu festival this year, such as the
San Francisco Symphony, Israel Philharmonic, conducted by the famous Zubin
Mehta, Vienna Philharmonic, Munich Opera Orchestra, Staatkapelle Dresden,
London Symphony Orchestra and many more. The 2015 edition of the biggest
cultural events organized by Romania will host 58 concerts and several outdoor events,
between the 30th of August and the 20th of September.
