May 20, 2023 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 20.05.2023, 19:15

SMR. The President of
Romania, Klaus Iohannis, welcomed the announcement made at the G7 Summit on
Saturday by the President of the United States, Joe Biden, regarding the
support of the USA and Japan, of the partners South Korea and the United Arab
Emirates of up to 275 million dollars for the Small Modular Reactor (SMR)
project in Romania, as well as letters of interest from US EXIM and US
International Development Finance Corporation for additional support of up to 4
billion dollars for project implementation. These initiatives represent an essential
support for Romania’s goal of standing in the forefront of the development of
the revolutionary nuclear energy infrastructure, and the implementation of the
SMR project in partnership with the USA will allow the production of clean
energy and increase energy security, the Romanian president stressed in a post on social networks. The G7 leaders
confirmed, in Hiroshima, their commitment to identifying new opportunities to
expand the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, an intitiative
of President Biden and the G7, in the field of infrastructure and which
provides for the financing of the first small modular reactor plant in Romania
.

Education. The Romanian
Prime Minister, Nicolae Ciucă, has announced that he has convened a meeting
with the education unions, on Sunday, at the Government headquarters. He has
stated that the solution for the education employees’ demands lies in the law on unitary wages. The prime
minister, who is also the leader of the National Liberal Party, a senior
partner in the ruling coalition, together with the Social Democratic Party, and
the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, has also said that the Ministry of Labor has the full support of
the coalition to implement the unitary wage law and the reform of special pensions,
in the shortest possible time. The prime minister’s statements come after the
president of the Social Democratic Party and Speaker of the Chamber of
Deputies, Marcel Ciolacu, has announced that any negotiations regarding the
future Cabinet, which he is about to lead, must be suspended until the demands
of the unions are resolved, as well as the major backlog regarding
the reform of special pensions. The education unions have announced that they
will go on an all-out strike on Monday, May 22. Their claims are mainly salary
related.

Schengen. The President of
the Court of Justice of the European Union, Koen Lenaerts, believes that the
file for the annulment of the decision to reject Romania’s accession to the
Schengen Area must be resolved quickly. I want to emphasize that Romania’s future is in Schengen. So the
reception of Romania and Bulgaria in the Schengen zone must happen in the very
near future. Indeed, when you bring a member state like Romania, but this is
also valid for all other members of the Schengen area, this means that the
internal borders between the Schengen members are open and that there are no
more checks when crossing the border. It also means that external borders
become a matter of common interest for all members of the Schengen area,
Lenaerts said. Although it had met all the accession
criteria, Romania was denied entry into Schengen last year, due to Austria’s
opposition.

Moldova. On Sunday morning, at the initiative of President Maia
Sandu, a large demonstration will take place in Chisinau to show the citizens’
support for the European integration of their country. The event takes place in
the context in which the Republic of Moldova (ex-Soviet, predominantly
Romanian-speaking), as a candidate country, would like to start accession
negotiations by the end of this year. In order to move to this stage, the
Republic of Moldova has to fulfill nine recommendations, which will be
evaluated by the fall in a European Commission report. The President of the
European Parliament, Roberta Metsola, will also participate in the event in
Chisinau.

Halep. The Romanian tennis player Simona Halep, former
world number one, faces a new case, related to ‘irregularities’ in the data of
her biological passport, the tennis anti-doping authority has announced.
Halep, the 2018 Roland Garros and 2019 Wimbledon champion, has been
provisionally suspended since last October after testing positive for
roxadustat during the US Open in August 2022. In an interview with Tennis
Majors published in late April, the player cited a contamination of one of her
dietary supplements to explain the positive test. The new case, confirmed on
Friday by the International Tennis Integrity Agency (ITIA), is based on an
assessment of the profile of her biological passport by a group of independent
experts. The biological passport makes it possible to monitor different blood
parameters over a long period of time. In a statement broadcast on Friday
evening, Simona Halep says that she is living the worst nightmare
of her life since the announcement of the suspension, on October 7, and denounces
a form of harassment on the part of ITIA, which she accuses of
trying to prove that she is guilty of something she has never done. (MI)