June 7, 2023 UPDATE

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 07.06.2023, 19:44

Strikes.
10,000 teachers have resumed classes, although over half of teachers continue
the strike action, said education minister Ligia Deca, while trade unions contradicted
her, saying the authorities were mistaken and that some 87% of teachers and
auxiliary staff are still on strike. Minister Ligia Deca said there were no
plans yet for rescheduling exams or extending the school year. In the meantime,
trade unions and the representatives of the education ministry met on Wednesday
to discuss the collective bargaining contract. Health care workers went on a token strike
on Wednesday. They carried armbands in sign of protest, but did not stop
working, said the Sanitas trade union federation. Protesters demand the
application of the salary law to all categories of employees and the granting
of basic salaries according to the scheme included in the law. They also want a
change in the way in which bonuses, extra hours and meal allowances are
calculated. A draft emergency order published on the labour ministry website
provides for the elimination of salary gaps between different categories of
employees. The same provision will apply to social workers and the employees of
defence, public order and national security. According to the initiators of the
draft order, the measure has an insignificant budget impact and will not disrupt
this year’s fiscal and budget targets.

B9. Russia
remains the biggest threat to European and Euro-Atlantic security, said the
president of Romania Klaus Iohannis at
the Bucharest Nine Summit hosted by Bratislava. He called for the consolidation
of national defence and underlined the need to create a consistent, united,
reliable and robust Forward Defence structure on NATO’s eastern flank. He added
that as a NATO and EU member state with the longest border with Ukraine,
Romania will stand by its neighbour as long as necessary and reiterated his
country’s support for Ukraine’s prospects for Euro-Atlantic integration. Klaus
Iohannis and the other leaders of the Bucharest Nine, an organisation founded
in 2015 at the initiative of the Romanian and Polish presidents, firmly condemned
Russia’s brutal, unjustified and illegal war against Ukraine and called on
Moscow to unconditionally withdraw its troops from Ukraine’s territory.

Exercise. The coast
guard headquarters in the Black Sea port city of Constanţa on Wednesday hosted the
VALHALA 23 exercise designed to test the capacity of the relevant structures to
manage high flows of refugees on the border. Specific activities were
conducted, such as health screenings, body-searches, identification of
vulnerable people, border inspections, finger-printing, and registration of
asylum applications. Taking part in the
exercise were staff and equipment from the General Border Police Inspectorate,
the Coast Guard, the General Inspectorate for Immigration, the General
Inspectorate for Emergency Situations, the General Inspectorate of the Romanian
Gendermerie, the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police and the Public
Health Directorate.

Theatre. The
Sibiu International Theatre Festival will get under way on 23rd June
in this central Romanian city. Now in its 30th year, the festival
will see its biggest line-up yet, with over 800 different events in more than
80 venues and bringing together around 3,500 performers from around the world.
More than half of the performances are street shows free of charge, while three
quarters of the tickets for the indoor performances are already sold out, the
festival president Constantin Chiriac told a press conference. (CM)