December 27, 2023

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 27.12.2023, 14:00

GOVERNMENT – The Bucharest government is going to amend the recently adopted emergency ordinance that reduces public spending from January 1. The Finance Ministry is expected to come up with a new draft ordinance, which stipulates, among the new fiscal-budgetary measures, the exemption of certain categories of public servants from the 5% salary increase planned for 2024. The Finance Ministry employees and the Ministry’s subordinate institutions are among them. Also, the judicial staff that benefited from a salary increase in 2023 will not receive a new one. Not even the teaching staff can get an additional 5% above the 20% increase included in the Education Ministry’s budget. The employees with the Ministry of Finance, Customs and Fiscal Administration say that they are holding a Japanese strike today, because they did not receive salary increases this year and that the normative act regarding their salaries only equalized incomes among employees with the same position and doing the same work.

CHRISTMAS — Today, on the third day of Christmas, Romanians celebrate Saint Stephen (Sfantul Ştefan). Saint Stephen was one of Christianity’s first martyrs. He was stoned to death in Jerusalem for blasphemy as he told the crown that the recently crucified Jesus was sitting next to God. Around 515,000 Romanians celebrate their name day today.

BUCHAREST – The Romanian air company TAROM resumes flights to Tel Aviv as of January 1, next year, after they were suspended following the attack of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas on Israel, on October 7, which had triggered a war in the Gaza Strip. There will be two regular flights a week.

POLICE – Last week, the Romanian police and partners from the states in the European free movement area caught more than 800 people, following alerts from the Schengen Information System. This year, more than 1,000 people were brought from abroad to Romanian prisons, of whom more than 700 are fugitives already convicted by Court. All others committed crimes abroad, but asked to serve their sentence in the country. In order to discourage convicts from fleeing the country, the Romanian Ministry of Justice initiated a normative act called the “the fugitives’ law”, adopted in November by the Chamber of Deputies but contested at the Constitutional Court, where it will be debated on January 31. After the law comes into force, fugitives will have a new sentence added to the existing one, of 6 to 36 months in prison.

FIRE – Seven people, including two children, died in a fire that destroyed the Ferma Dacilor guesthouse in Tohani, Prahova county (southern Romania). The search continues, as a person is still missing. A woman and a child are in hospital with burns. It seems that the fire broke out in the building’s attic, where 26 people were accommodated. Investigations are under way. The guesthouse was operating without a fire safety permit, for which reason the National Anticorruption Directorate will reopen a case closed in March, related to this fact. (EE)