May 24, 2024 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 24.05.2024, 20:15
Salaries – Gross minimum wages will be raised to roughly 740 Euros as of July 1, and the facility granted to employers, under which 40 Euros of employees’ salaries are tax free will stay in place until the end of the year, the Romanian PM Marcel Ciolacu announced on Thursday, after a meeting of the three-party council comprising government, employers’ union and trade union officials. On the other hand, the government has increased the financial assistance for people with disabilities. As of July 1, the allowance for an adult with disabilities will be 105 Euros, and the one for a child with severe disabilities will be 92 Euros. According to official data, some 390,000 people will benefit from the increase. The government has also approved state aid for the national airline, Tarom, which the transport minister Sorin Grindeanu says is a major step for saving the company.
Judiciary – The former chief operative of the Romanian Intelligence Service (SRI), Florian Coldea, was placed by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate under court supervision on bail. The same measure has been ordered with respect to ret. gen. Dumitru Dumbravă, the former head of the Service’s judicial service, and to the lawyer Doru Trăilă. The 3 are charged with influence peddling and money laundering, and are probed into following a complaint filed by the businessman Cătălin Hideg, who was sentenced to 4 years in prison in a European Public Prosecutor’s Office investigation into frauds involving EU funds. The businessman claims that Coldea and Dumbravă had asked him to pay 600,000 Euros using the lawyer Doru Trăilă as a go-between, in exchange for a suspended sentence in court.
Drone – The first Romanian drone is going to be produced at the Carfil factory, in Braşov, in central Romania, a subsidiary of ROMARM S.A. National Company. A first step in this direction was taken on Friday, at the “Black Sea Defense and Aerospace” international exhibition, following the signing of a strategic agreement with the American manufacturer of military and civil drones, Periscope Aviation. The Romanian Economy Minister, Radu Oprea, said that the agreement is a first for the Romanian defense industry, being the first strategic partnership of a domestic company in the field of construction of military and civilian drone devices. He added that two other agreements related to the research activity in the field were also signed. The participants in the “Black Sea Defense and Aerospace” exhibition, an event that takes place in Bucharest, said that the objective of the agreement is the mass production of a 100% Romanian drone, with variants intended for both defense and civil domains, such as agriculture.
Treason – A Romanian citizen was placed under preventive arrest for treason. He is accused of informing the Russian Embassy in Bucharest about NATO military objectives in Romania. The prosecutors of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism DIICOT reported that, as early as 2022, the Romanian supervised the military objectives near the city of Tulcea, in the southeast of the country, gathered military information and took photographs of combat equipment and its movement in the border area with Ukraine, which he sent to diplomats from the Russian diplomatic representation in Bucharest. DIICOT specified that, following house searches, several pieces of evidence were identified and seized. A Russian diplomat from Bucharest was expelled, on the grounds that he would have carried out activities that run counter to the provisions of the 1961 Vienna Convention.
Tennis – The Romanian tennis players Sorana Cîrstea, Ana Bogdan, Jaqueline Cristian and Irina Begu found out their opponents in the first round of the tournament at Roland Garros, the second Grand Slam tournament of the year, following the drawing of lots held on Thursday in Paris. Sorana Cîrstea, seed number 28, will debut against the Russian Ana Blinkova, whom she defeated in 2020, in Dubai. Ana Bogdan will take on the French Elsa Jacquemot in their first match in the professional circuit. In turn, Jaqueline Cristian will have a tough match against the Latvian Jelena Ostapenko, world number 10. Jaqueline Cristian won in 2021, in the round of 16 in St. Petersburg, her only match played so far against the 2016 Roland Garros champion. And Irina Begu will meet, in the first round, an opponent from the qualifications. (LS)
