Newsflash June 28
A round-up of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 28.06.2013, 00:00
Romania will redefine its energy policy, starting from its own resources and without waiting for external approvals, after the Nabucco project ended in a failure. The statement was made on Friday by Romania’s President, Traian Basescu, who attended the European Council meeting held in Brussels. He underlined that his country has the duty to step up assessment processes and start exploiting the gas and crude oil deposits identified in the Black Sea as well as shale gas. Traian Basescu also said that Romania will receive 400 million Euros in the 2014-2015 period, of the 6 billion Euro program drafted by the European Council in order to reduce unemployment among young people, in the 15- 24 year age bracket. In another move, the EU heads of state and government decided in Brussels to start accession talks with Serbia, in recognition of Belgrade’s efforts to improve its relations with the former province of Kosovo.
The Shah Deniz consortium has chosen the Trans Adriatic Pipeline to carry Azeri natural gas to Europe, according to press agencies. Nabucco West and the Trans Adriatic were the only two projects competing for the delivery of Azerbaijan’s natural gas to Europe. The Trans Adriatic will carry 10 billion cubic metres of Azeri gas per year across an 870 km long pipeline across Greece, Albania and the Adriatic Sea before reaching Italy. The cancellation of the Nabucco project, which implied the construction of a pipeline to transit Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Austria, leads to significant losses for the countries involved. In Bucharest, the authorities say the failure of the project was partly also due to the lack of a coherent and long-term energy policy in Romania.
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta and his Uzbek counterpart Shavkat Mirziioev have decided in Tashkent to set up a joint intergovernmental commission for economic, industrial and technical cooperation. The Uzbek official underlined that the Romanian Prime minister’s visit had been preceded by the visit of a Romanian business delegation to Tashkent. In turn, Victor Ponta hailed the agreement signed by the Romanian medicine producers who will distribute pharmaceutical products on the Uzbek market. Victor Ponta’s visit to Uzbekistan is part of an Asian tour which also takes him to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and China.
The European Commissioner for Agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, said in Bucharest on Friday that the new Common Agricultural Policy is the first to be decided upon together with the European Parliament and the Council of Agriculture Ministers of the 27 EU countries. According to the reform, many of the big European farms, especially those in France, Spain, and Italy will lose up to 30% of the subsidies, to allow for a most equitable and just allocation within the EU. Agriculture continues to be the EU’s first spending chapter, accounting for 38% of the overall budget for the next 7 years. Romania will receive larger amounts of European money for agriculture and will enjoy programs adjusted to its own priorities
Investigations continue in Bucharest into the causes of the bus accident in Montenegro in which 18 Romanian nationals were killed. From the investigations carried out by the authorities in Montenegro so far it appears that when the bus exited a high-speed tunnel, the road was humid and the driver may have been inconvenienced by the bright sun, leading him to lose control of the bus while taking a turn.
