The Week in Review – September 7-11

Click here for the highlights of the past week in Romania

Corina Cristea, 12.09.2015, 13:46

High-level decisions regarding the refugee crisis

The European Parliament on Thursday adopted the package of emergency measures proposed by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker regarding the system of distribution quotas for migrants in EU Member States.A resolution passed in Strasbourg by a large majority criticizes the regrettable lack of solidarity of Governments towards asylum seekers. Meanwhile national authorities continue to be split over the way the refugee crisis should be handled. In Bucharest, president Klaus Iohannis again called on voluntary quotas for migrant distribution. The emergency scheme for receiving refugees in EU Member States dictates that Romania must take in some 4,646 refugees on top of the 1,785 it originally pledged to accommodate. Romania cannot accommodate a number of refugees above its current capacity at national level, Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu has said.

Bogdan Aurescu: “We need to come up with solutions so as to try to deal with the root causes of this phenomenon, namely in the refugees’ countries of origin. We also need to look at the difference between being a refugee in line with UN regulations and being an economic migrant”.

Bucharest General Mayor Sorin Oprescu is arrested

The Bucharest Tribunal has placed Bucharest General Mayor Sorin Oprescu under a 30-day arrest pending trial for bribe taking. While it can be appealed, the decision is enforceable. Anti-corruption prosecutors accuse Sorin Oprescu of pocketing 10% of the value of public contracts, and arrested him after catching him receiving 25,000 euros of a total of 60,000 he had demanded of four people via a subordinate allegedly charged with handling the bribe. One of the four whistleblowers says he had overall given Sorin Oprescu 1 million euros in bribes in the 2013-2015 period. The Bucharest Tribunal motivated its decision, saying that Oprescu knew the money was a bribe and not a loan, as he had originally claimed. Meanwhile, the court wants to keep Sorin Oprescu under pre-trial arrest, arguing that he might be able to influence other witnesses involved in the ongoing investigation, all the more so as some of them are his subordinates. A professional doctor and a former member of the Social Democratic Party, Sorin Oprescu was elected Bucharest Mayor in 2008. The Court of Appeal on Monday is to rule Oprescu’s appeal to the pre-trial arrest.

The new fiscal code has been promulgated

Sent back to Parliament by president Klaus Iohannis and endorsed by the Legislature last week, the New Fiscal Code has eventually been promulgated by the country’s president. Among the new measures provided by the new code, there are a VAT cut to 20% at the beginning of next year and a further trimming to 19% to come into effect on January 1st 2017. The new code also provides for the elimination of the tax on special constructions as well as the additional fuel excise. The code also includes several less known measures but with an impact which is not negligible, such as the possibility of local councils to impose taxes on unattended plots of land within city limits. The inclusion in this category as well as implementation procedures are to be passed through local decisions. Household owners will pay higher taxes according to their present location, while taxes on buildings and plots of land belonging to various institutions employing disadvantaged people have been diminished. The tax on special constructions will be eliminated at the beginning of next year, but only investors in the agriculture infrastructure will benefit from this measure. A cut from 16 to 5% in the tax on dividends has been postponed until 2017.

Romanian farmers demand compensations from the EU

Romanian Agriculture Minister Daniel Constantin has called on the European officials to come up with effective solutions both for the Romanian farmers affected by the severe drought this year and the dairy producers who are seeing their incomes significantly diminished. The Romanian minister attended the European Council Proceedings (Agriculture and Fisheries), focusing on the difficult situation facing certain agricultural sectors at European level. The European Commission has pledged 500 million euros in aid for the European farmers.

The George Enescu Classical Music Festival

Considered the most important cultural event in Romania at this time, the George Enescu International Music Festival continues in Bucharest. Scores of concerts given by famous world orchestras will have taken place by the festival’s last day on September 20th. And over 3,000 prestigious artists and ensembles from Romania and abroad will have stepped on to the festival’s stages, such as the San Francisco Symphony, the Munich Opera Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonics, the Saint Petersburg Orchestra, the Philharmonics in Monte Carlo or the Amsterdam Orchestra. Staged for the first time back in 1958, three years after the death of the famous Romanian composer, the festival was interrupted in 1971 by the communist regime but was resumed shortly after its collapse in 1989. The George Enescu Classical Music Festival is being staged every other year.