March 1, 2024 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 01.03.2024, 19:58
Elections. Candidates in the European Parliament elections can also run in the local election, according to a draft emergency decree on the joint organization of the two ballots, recently launched for public debate. The elections will be held on June 9. To prevent two officials from holding office at the same time, the mandates of newly elected mayors will be validated on September 27, when the term of the current local officials is set to expire. At the same time, acting mayors and county council presidents will be allowed to run on behalf of a political party other than the one they represented in the previous round of election. The PSD-PNL government says the joint organization of local and European Parliament elections will ensure greater participation in the European election and help curb public spending. We recall the presidential election will be held in September whereas the parliamentary election is due in December.
Central Bank. The foreign exchange reserves of the National Bank of Romania reached a new historical high at the end of February, exceeding 63.1 billion euros. The increase was mainly due to the inflow of amounts resulting from the issuance of eurobonds by the Ministry of Finance worth four billion euros, given that, in February, payments due on the public debt account totaled approximately 825 million euros. The level of the gold reserve remained at 103.6 tons, its value exceeding 6.2 billion euros.
Moldova. The Speaker of the Romanian Senate, former Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă is in the Moldovan capital Chisinau, where he has conveyed a strong message of solidarity and support for the Republic of Moldova. He has voiced confidence that, one day, Romania and the Republic of Moldova will be together in the great European family. Ciucă has stressed that the Republic of Moldova is an independent and sovereign country, which “must and can decide its own fate”. The Romanian official met on Friday with the President of the Moldovan Parliament, Igor Grosu. On the eve of the visit, Nicolae Ciucă congratulated the leadership in Chisinau “for the responsible and balanced way in which it approaches security issues in a period full of challenges in the region” – with reference to the war in neighboring Ukraine, invaded by Russian troops.
Congress. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu is attending in Rome the Congress of the Party of European Socialists . The Congress is expected to adopt the joint Socialist platform ahead of the European Parliament election and designate the candidate for the European Commission presidency. A meeting of the European S&D Group will be held in Bucharest in April. Next week, the Romanian Liberal Party is also expected to host the European People’s Party Congress, to be attended by some 2,000 participants.
Navalny. Thousands of supporters of the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny gathered in the Mariino neighborhood of the southeastern suburbs of Moscow on Friday to atend his funeral, despite the huge police presence and the risk of being arrested. Navalny, who died at the age of 47 in a penitentiary colony in the Arctic region, was buried in a cemetery on the outskirts of the Russian capital, to the tunes of his favorite song, ‘My Way’, by Frank Sinatra. People chanted ‘Russia will be free!’, ‘No to war!’, ‘Russia without Putin!’, ‘We will not forget!’ and ‘Putin is a criminal!’, Reuters reports. Navalny’s allies have accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination because the Russian leader would not have tolerated the idea that Navalny could be released in a potential prisoner exchange. They have not published evidence to support this allegation, but have promised to show how he was killed and by whom. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Navalny’s death.
Emergency. A new version of the national platform for emergency preparedness in Romania, (fiipregatit.ro), was launched on Friday together with the new website of the National Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction. In addition to information on life-saving actions in extreme situations, it also contains a virtual assistant that uses artificial intelligence, said the head of the Department for Emergency Situations, Raed Arafat. He specified that the final version will include animated guides especially for children, and the application will be translated into several languages, not only those of the minorities in Romania. Arafat explained that the site’s virtual assistant was created with OpenAI technology and was prepared to answer questions related to emergency situations.
March 1st. Romanians celebrated the coming of spring on March 1, also known as Mărțișor. The symbol of this popular holiday is the March trinket, usually an item of jewelry accompanied by a red and white string. Traditions associated with Mărțișor were inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity in 2017. (MI)
