September30, 2021

A roundup of domestic and international news

România Internațional, 30.09.2021, 13:55

Motion. The motion of
no-confidence filed by the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the main opposition
party in Romania, against the Government headed by the Liberal Florin Citu is being
read today in plenary parliament session. The document was signed by 157
Social-Democratic MPs, who believe that the Prime Minister must be sacked, and
the only solution to the current political, economic and social crisis in Roman
is early elections. USR-Plus, the Liberals’ governing partner until recently,
has announced that it will vote the motion. The nationalists from the opposition
Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) have stated that they will vote the
motion too, because the Citu Government lacks legitimacy and does not observe
the Constitution. In turn, PM Florin Citu
has announced that the National Liberal Party (PNL) has set up
negotiating teams that will try to have the motion rejected and maintain the parliamentary
majority. The debates on the motion will be held on October 5th. We recall that
there is another motion in parliament filed against the current cabinet by
USR-Plus and AUR.

Covid-19RO. Health-care units in
Romania are looking for solutions to manage the large number of Sars-CoV-2 infections.
Two hospitals in Bucharest have announced they have started discharging
patients that can get treatment at home and transferring those who need hospital
care to other units, in order to become exclusively Covid-19 hospitals. The decision
was made in order to increase the number of beds for Covid-19 patients, as an increasing
number of people infected get to the hospital in serious condition. 14 towns
and cities across the country have already exceeded the incidence of 6 per one
thousand inhabitants, including Bucharest, Cluj and Timisoara. More than 12
thousand new cases of infection have been reported today, as well as 176
related deaths in 24 hours. 1364 patients are in intensive care.

Visit. The Romanian Minister of
Foreign Affairs, Bogdan Aurescu, is on a formal two-day visit to Spain, in the
context of celebrating 140 years of bilateral diplomatic relations. The program
of the visit includes political consultations with his Spanish counterpart, Jose Manuel Albares
Bueno, and the launching of a bilingual
album dedicated to this anniversary. The two ministers will discuss ways of
developing and deepening the bilateral relationship, raised in 2013 at the
level of Strategic Partnership, as well as the current European, regional,
international and security issues. Also, Bogdan Aurescu will inaugurate the
exhibition Archaeological Treasures from Romania. Dacian and Roman roots at
the National Museum of Archeology in Madrid, an event held under the High
Patronage of the President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, and of King Felipe VI of
Spain. The archeological exhibition is one of the most important organized
outside Romania.

Energy. The Ministry of Energy in
Bucharest is preparing a state aid scheme for small and medium-sized
enterprises, in the context of the energy price crisis. The scheme would be
applied as of November 18th. In another move, a parliamentary
inquiry commission has called to hearings representatives of the Romanian
Energy Regulatory Authority (ANRE) to clarify the increases in electricity and
natural gas bills in Romania.

Diaspora. Starting today, the
Parliament Palace in Bucharest is hosting the 6th RePatriot summit, devoted to
the Romanian Diaspora, which will bring together, until October 3rd, more than
300 Romanians from around the world. A jubilee volume will be also launched on
the occasion, and the visitors will be able to watch a new exhibition, titled Photogeographica,
a quarter of a century. The Photogeographica project was born in the 1990s and
is the most important youth photography contest in Romania, an ample event that
capitalizes on the Romanian natural and
cultural heritage.

Sarkozy. The former French
Conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty on Thursday of
illegally financing his 2012 election campaign and sentenced to one year in
prison. The verdict comes just seven months after he was convicted of corruption
and influence peddling. The Court of First Instance ruled that Sarkozy had
benefited from a double-entry system created in order to circumvent the
campaign spending limits imposed by the French law.

Football. The Romanian football
champion, CFR Cluj (northwest), takes on tonight, on home turf, the Danes from Randers FC, in a new match part
of Group D of the newly created Europa Conference League. In the debut matches,
CFR was defeated, away from home, 0-1, by FK Jablonec, from the Czech Republic,
and Randers ended in a draw, 2-2 the match with the Dutch from AZ Alkmaar.
Eliminated, successively, from the Champions League preliminaries and from the
Europa League play-offs, CFR remained the only Romanian team in the current
edition of the European football cups. Three other Romanian representatives in
the Conference League, FCSB, CSU Craiova (south) and Sepsi OSK Sfântu Gheorghe
(center) were eliminated in July, in the second preliminary round. (MI)