January 27 – February 2
A roundup of the week's main stories
Corina Cristea, 01.02.2014, 16:34
Romania faces harsh winter weather.This week Romania has been hit by powerful snowstorms and frost, which made the authorities announce a state of alert in several counties in the east and southeast of the country. Additional military and civilian forces have been sent to those regions to help solve the problems caused by the bad weather. According to the Inspectorate for Emergency Situations hundreds of villages and communes are still affected by heavy snowfalls and strong winds. Highways and several national roads have been temporarily closed and classes have been suspended for one week in Bucharest and several counties in the southeast. Speed restrictions have been imposed on several railways, hundreds of trains have been cancelled and others reported big delays.
Two former ministers sentenced on corruption charges. The former transport minister, the Liberal Relu Fenechiu, has received a final sentence this past week from the High Court of Cassation and Justice. He was sentenced to 5 years in prison in a corruption case. Fenechiu is accused of having sold outdated, second-hand transformers and circuit breakers made in the 1970s to state-run energy companies, at the price of new equipment. The total damage calculated by prosecutors exceeds 1.7 million euros. A 5-year sentence was also passed in a case involving Monica Iacob Ridzi, a former minister of Youth and Sports between 2008-2009 in the Liberal Democratic government led by Emil Boc. She was found guilty of abuse of office related to events organized in 2009 on the National Youth Day. She illegally awarded service contracts to several private companies. After the start of the investigation, Ridzi is said to have tried to delete relevant information from ministry computers. The ruling is not final and can be challenged in court.
Changes in the Romanian judiciary. The Romanian President, Traian Basescu, has called on PM Victor Ponta to pass an emergency ordinance to change the new Code of Criminal Procedure scheduled to take effect on February 1st alongside the Criminal Code. According to the President, certain provisions, such as the one allowing phone tapping in the case of suspected criminals only after they have been notified, are likely to create malfunctions in the judiciary. In reply, the PM called on the President to assume responsibility publicly for having promulgated the aforementioned codes, and announced that the justice minister would present the government with proposals for the modification of the codes, to be discussed next week. The National Anti-Corruption Directorate and the Higher Council of Magistracy have repeatedly asked for the modification of the Criminal and Criminal Procedure Codes. The two codes were endorsed in 2009 after the Liberal Democratic government headed by Emil Boc asked for Parliament’s vote of confidence on the new legislation.
International lenders continue their assessment visit to Bucharest.The joint IMF, European Commission and World Bank delegation is on a visit to Bucharest to assess the stand-by agreement concluded with Romania last autumn. They have held talks with PM Ponta and other Romanian officials as well as with trade union representatives. The talks, to end on February 5th, focus on economic reform priorities and the legislative framework with impact on the economy. The PM announced that the government could not give up the 7-eurocent fuel excise increase. He conveyed his opinion to President Basescu who opposes the additional taxes on fuels. The introduction of the new excise could be postponed by another 3 months but only for diesel oil, PM Ponta pointed out.
The investigation into the causes of the plane crash in the Apuseni Mountains continues. The investigation into the causes of the plane crash in the Apuseni Mountains of January 20th 2014 continues. The plane, which was carrying a medical team, was forced to land in a bumpy mountain area, at more than 1,400 meters altitude. All the 7 passengers had survived the crash but two of them died of cold before the rescue teams found them after more than 6 hours. Following criticism against his failure to properly coordinate the rescue operation, interior minister Radu Stroe has resigned. The Liberal minister was also blamed for the undiplomatic press statements he made soon after the accident, for which he subsequently apologized publicly.
The situation in Ukraine continues to be tense. The Romanian Foreign Ministry has said it is closely following the developments in Ukraine and monitoring the situation of the Romanian community in the west of that country. For the moment no risk situations have been identified for the Romanians in Ukraine. The Romanian Foreign Ministry is pleading for dialogue as a way of solving the crisis, underlining that it will remain actively involved in the debates regarding Ukraine held within the European and Euro Atlantic institutions. Ukraine has been faced with an unprecedented political crisis after the Yanukovych regime refused, in November, to sign the association and free trade agreements with the EU, choosing instead to come closer to Russia. The EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, has called for halting violence and the acts of intimidation, pleading for dialogue between the power and opposition.
