30 June, 2019

Romanias rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union comes to an end./ President Klaus Iohannis attends Brussels summit to discuss nominations for top EU jobs.

Newsroom, 30.06.2019, 13:51

EU presidency. Romania’s rotating 6-month
presidency of the Council of the European Union comes to an end today. Romania,
which joined the Union in 2007, has held the presidency for the first time. Its
term was marked by key moments such as the Sibiu summit held on Europe Day on 9th
of May and the elections for the European Parliament held between the 23rd
and the 26th of May. The president of the European Council Donald
Tusk has sent a message to the Romanian president Klaus Iohannis on the
conclusion of the Romanian presidency, saying: You managed to have 90 pieces of legislation agreed in
the last 100 days before the European elections, including border protection,
reducing CO2 emissions and building a digital Europe. That is impressive!

EU summit. Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis attends a special summit in Brussels
to discuss the nominations for the EU’s top jobs. An agreement must be reached
by the 2nd of July, when the new European Parliament holds its
inaugural session. The positions that are being negotiated are the roles of
European Parliament speaker, European Council president, the High
Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, the president of the
European Central Bank, and, the most disputed, the president of the European
Commission, a position currently held by Jean-Claude Juncker. The German press
says that after talks on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Japan, chancellor
Angela Merkel reportedly gave up endorsing the candidate of the European
People’s Party Manfred Weber, who was contested by France and the
Central-European states.

Commemoration. President
Klaus Iohannis sent a message on Sunday on the 78th anniversary of
the Iasi pogrom of 1941. Tolerance, respect and solidarity are essential,
defining elements that underlie Romanian contemporary society, principles we
must nurture and defend, his message writes. Iohannis also welcomed the
initiative of the local authorities to turn the former police headquarters into
a place for the commemoration of the Jews killed in 1941. He said he would
continue to support the creation in Bucharest of a national museum of the
history of Jews and the Holocaust. In June 1941, almost 15,000 people were
killed in Iasi, in the north-east, in the biggest massacre against the Jews
committed in Romania.

Party congress. Prime minister Viorica Dancila
was re-elected on Saturday at an extraordinary congress as leader of the Social
Democratic Party, the main force in the ruling coalition in Bucharest. She is
the first woman to hold this position in her party. The former president of the
party, Liviu Dragnea, is now in prison for acts of corruption. The finance
minister Eugen Teodorovici was elected executive president and
former defence minister Mihai Fifor secretary general.

Tennis. The no. 7 seed Simona Halep of
Romania will face Aliaksandra Sasnovich of Belarus in the first round at
Wimbledon, the third Grand Slam tournament of the year, which begins on Monday.
Another Romanian player, Mihaela Buzarnescu, plays against Jessica Pegula of
the US in the first round and will meet Halep if she makes it to the second
round. Qualifier Ana Bogdan is up for a tough match against the British no. 1 Johanna
Konta, who is seeded 9th. Sorana Cirstea will face 25th
seed Amanda Anisimova of the US. Monica Niculescu, who got a wild card for
Wimbledon, plays Germany’s Andrea Petkovic. Qualifier Elena-Gabriela Ruse faces
Germany’s Julia Goerges in the opening round, seeded 18th. In the
men’s draw, Romania’s Marius Copil faces Argentina’s Guido Pella in the first
round.

Film. The European Film Festival comes to an end in Sibiu,
in central Romania, where it brought together seven recent titles and a classic
film from the 1990s. The line-up included the French-Belgian production Memoir
of War directed by Emmanuel Finkiel, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s political thriller The
Realm, Benedikt Erlingsson’s comedy Woman at War, Bálint Kenyeres’s Yesterday, Elina
Psykou’s Son of Sofia and the 1998 Irish production My Left Foot by Jim
Sheridan. The European Film Festival was also held this year in Bucharest,
Ramnicu Valcea, in the south, Targu Mures, in the centre, as well as in
Chisinau, in the Republic of Moldova, an ex-Soviet state with a majority
Romanian-speaking population.