December 2, 2021 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 02.12.2021, 23:41
Financing. The European Commission transferred to Romania, on Thursday, under the NextGenerationEU instrument, 1.8 billion euro worth of pre-financing, the equivalent of 13% of the total grants allocated to the country under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, according to a communiqué issued by the European Commission. This pre-financing will support the start of the implementation of the investment and reform measures included in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan. Under the Plan, Romania benefits from approximately 29 billion euros, of which almost half are grants and the rest are loans. In another move, the Commission has decided to send Romania to the Court of Justice of the European Union in two cases: for failing to comply with EU rules to tackle industrial pollution and to adopt an air pollution control programme.
Covid-19. Two of the three people that have been recently brought back to the country from South Africa are most likely infected with the Omicron variant, the Romanian Health Ministry announced on Thursday. The three people who have tested positive are vaccinated and asymptomatic. They have been quarantined monitored by doctors. All three of them were on board the same plane. Authorities say that samples have been sent to labs for sequencing. There are currently 7 labs that provide sequencing services in Romania and the Health Ministry wants to have more of them in order to detect the Omicron variant faster. Some 1,149 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the last 24 hours and 66 related deaths, of which 8 from a previous timeframe. The infection rate in the capital Bucharest has dropped to 1.71 cases per thousand inhabitants. 1076 Covid-19 patients are currently in intensive care. The incidence rate aggregated over a period of 14 days is less than 5 per one thousand inhabitants everywhere in Romania. As regards vaccination, a little over 7.4 million people have been fully vaccinated.
OSCE. The Romanian foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu is participating in the 28th Ministerial Council of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). This year’s meeting, held in Stockholm, takes place in the context of tensions sparked by the migrant crisis at the Belarusian border with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, and the conflicts in eastern Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh. In Stockholm, Aurescu took part in the event dedicated to the activation of the Moscow Mechanism on Alleged human Rights Violations in Belarus.The event, organised by Denmark, Germany and the United Kingdom, was co-sponsored by Romania. In his speech, Minister Aurescu referred to the worrying developments in Belarus, as well as to the diversification of the tools and methods of repression used by the Minsk authorities against the opposition and civil society. He expressed concern over the deteriorating human rights situation, condemned once again the use of migrants as tools and called for the release of political prisoners.
Corruption. The European Court of Human Rights has rejected as inadmissible the request of the former Romanian Minister of Youth and Sports, Monica Iacob Ridzi, convicted of corruption and abuse of office, according to a statement issued on Thursday by the Strasbourg court. She claimed that she did not receive a fair trial and that the hearing of two witnesses during the criminal proceedings was not possible. In 2014, Monica Iacob Ridzi was sentenced to 5 years in prison for illegally awarding contracts at overvalued rates to some private companies for organising Youth Day festivities. The damage caused to the ministry’s budget was 650 thousand euros. In addition, according to the National Anticorruption Directorate, she used the ministry’s resources for personal promotion.
Unemployment. The unemployment rate in Romania in the month of October stood at 5.3%, the same level as in the month before, according to the National Institute of Statistics. In terms of gender, the unemployment rate among men exceeded by 0.9% that of women. The unemployment rate among young people aged 15 to 24 remains high – 19.6%.
Handball. Romania is taking part in the 2021 World Women’s Handball Championship that kicked off in Spain. The Romanians, part of group C, will take on Iran on Friday, Kazakhstan on December 5 and Norway on December 7. The first three out of 32 national teams qualify to the main groups. This is the 25th participation in a world championship for the Romanian squad that has not missed any edition. They won gold in 1962, silver in 1973 and 2005 and bronze in 2015. (MI)
