September 21, 2014 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
România Internațional, 21.09.2014, 12:05
The Romanian Foreign Ministry has finalized the list of polling stations from abroad in the run up to the November presidential election. 294 polling stations will be set up for the Romanian citizens who want to cast their votes in November for Romania’s future president. The polling stations will be set up at the headquarters of the Romanian diplomatic and consular missions, in the Romanian cultural institutes from abroad, in the theaters of operations from Afghanistan as well as in other locations that allow for the unfolding of a correct and unbiased voting process.
A former justice minister, the Euro MP Monica Macovei on Sunday submitted her candidacy for Romania’s presidency to the Central Electoral Bureau. One of the objectives of Mrs. Macovei, if she were elected president, would be the introduction of electronic voting and of vote by correspondence. This is the 3rd candidacy registered by the Central Electoral Bureau, besides those of the Social Democratic leader and PM Victor Ponta and the Liberal leader Klaus Iohannis. The deadline for candidacy registration is September 23rd. The election campaign for the presidential election will start on October 3rd, the first round of voting will be held on November 2nd while the second round on November 16th.
The IMF, the European Commission and the World Bank have agreed to postpone the liberalization of the gas price for domestic consumers and also accepted the deadlines proposed by the Romanian side, said the minister delegate for energy, Razvan Nicolescu. He approached this issue with Romania’s foreign creditors in Brussels. Early this month minister Nicolescu announced he would suggest the Brussels officials that the internal gas price for the population should remain the same until July 1st 2016 and that the liberalization period should be extended up until July 2021 as compared to December 31st 2018 as the current timetable stipulated. According to the energy market liberalization timetable that Romania assumed in 2012 before the IMF and the European Commission, the gas price for the population should have been increased by 3% as of October 1st 2014.
In Bucharest continues the 2nd edition of the International Radio Orchestras Festival –RadiRo, the only European musical event devoted exclusively to radio orchestras, organized by Radio Romania. Scheduled for Sunday evening is a concert by the National Radio Orchestra under the baton of conductor Cristian Mandeal, featuring soprano Katarina Jovanović. On Saturday the concert opening the festival was performed by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra that was for the first time on a Romanian stage. The festival will come to an end on September 27th and will bring on the Romanian stage internationally famous European radio orchestras, conductors and soloists.
Fairs, exhibitions, concerts and the famous battle of flowers on the high street were some of the events prepared for the inhabitants of Bucharest on the occasion of Bucharest’s days. Romania’s capital celebrated this weekend 555 years since it was first attested in documents. Saturday saw open-air parties, concerts and culinary fairs. The facade of the Palace of Parliament, the second largest building in the world after the Pentagon, became a giant screen for the projection of various images that animated the building through forms and colours. The show was the result of the cooperation of several teams of artists from France, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Romania. Bucharest has been Romania’s capital since 1862. Between the two World Wars the elegant architecture and the elite of those times earned Bucharest the name of “Little Paris”.
In the first half of 2014 Romania exported farming products worth more than 2 billion euros, 10% more than in the same period of 2013. According to an Agriculture Ministry communiqué the value of imports, that exceeded 2 billion euros, was only 1.1% higher than that reported in the first 6 months of 2013. The main product exported was corn. Pork and ready foods are in the imports top.
