June 15, 2024

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 15.06.2024, 14:10

JUDICIARY – The indictment in the Revolution case, in which the former president of Romania, Ion Iliescu, is also accused, was annulled, for the second time, by the High Court of Cassation and Justice. The High Court judges have given the military prosecutors a deadline of five days to specify whether they further send the file to Court or redo the investigation. In October last year, the Bucharest Court of Appeal decided to start the trial in the Revolution case, in which former president Ion Iliescu, former deputy prime minister Gelu Voican-Voiculescu and former head of military aviation Iosif Rus are accused of crimes against humanity. The Court found then that the indictment drawn up by the military prosecutors was legal. The defendants appealed the solution to the High Court, which has now identified irregularities in the indictment.

PATRIOT – As of Friday, the Romanian Air Forces have two operational Patriot anti-missile systems, after the first one entered the combat service in 2022. The US Embassy in Bucharest hailed the moment and said that Romania now has the air defense capacity to protect its citizens and its territory. The NATO exercise RAMSTEIN LEGACY 24 took place between June 3-14, in the Capu Midia range, integrating air and anti-missile defense structures. About 1,300 Romanian and allied military participated in it. The exercise contributed to increasing interoperability and practice tactics, techniques, and procedures for defensive operations. According to the US Embassy in Romania, with these exercises, Romania has demonstrated high levels of technical expertise and competence to defend against advanced air threats.

CANDIDATES – PSD and PNL, the parties that make up the ruling coalition in Romania, will each have their own candidate in the presidential elections this year. The leaders of the two political parties, the Social-Democratic prime minister Marcel Ciolacu and the former Liberal prime minister Nicoale Ciucă, expressed their wish that the ruling formula be preserved, saying that this collaboration can work even if the political partners will be contenders in the presidential elections. However, the two did not rule out a collaboration with other parliamentary parties. Ciucă was open to receiving any support for liberal policies, while Ciolacu said that the social democrats have the ability to build a new political alliance. He ruled out a rescheduling of the next polls. However, Nicolae Ciucă would like to postpone the presidential elections, citing difficulties in education activities after the election, given that many polling stations are set up in education units. In the European elections, held on June 9, PSD and PNL ran on a joint list and obtained 48.7% of the votes.

ELECTIONS – The vote count in the local and European elections in Romania are in the final stage, according to the Permanent Electoral Authority (AEP). Most delays are in the vote count for councilors and county council presidents, where a little more than half of the constituencies were centralized. The mayors and local councils have entered most of the data, but the mayors of districts 1 and 2 of the capital Bucharest continue to challenge the result according to which they lost the elections. Clotilde Armand and Radu Mihaiu, members of the Save Romania Union, an opposition party in the Bucharest Parliament, announced that they have filed criminal complaints, claiming that they have evidence of the irregularities reported in recent days. According to the latest data, made public on Friday evening by the Central Electoral Bureau, the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party, part of the ruling coalition, obtained 36.66% and 31.19% respectively, of the mandates for mayor. The Alliance for the Union of Romanians, in the opposition, collected over 6%, and the United Right Alliance, of which the USR is also a part, received almost 1% less.

JOBS – In 2023, Romania was the country in the European Union with the highest rate of young people who do not study or have a job, according to Eurostat data. Figures show that 19.3% of the young Romanians aged between 15 and 29 are neither employed nor studying. Romania is followed by Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, the latter with approximately 14%. In the Netherlands, on the other hand, only 4.8% of young people are not involved in the two activities. Sweden, Malta and Slovenia follow, all with less than 7%. At European level, this indicator decreased by 0.5% compared to the previous year and by 5% compared to 10 years ago and stands at 11.2%. The European target is 9% for the year 2030 and already a third of the member states have reached this threshold. (EE)