December 17, 2014
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România Internațional, 17.12.2014, 12:00
Republic of Moldova’s acting Prime Minister Iurie Leanca as of today is on a two-day visit to Brussels. High on the Moldovan official’s agenda are talks with European top-ranking officials, among whom the new European Council President, former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and the European Commissioner for Trade Cecilia Malmstrom. Leanca will also hold talks with the European Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn as well as with the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini. Talks will mainly be focusing on finalizing the judicial reform, decentralization and ways to improve the fight against corruption.
Romania’s Foreign Affairs Ministry has specified the report on CIA’s interrogation program the US Senate made public last week and quoted by the media made no mention of Romania. Authorities in Bucharest do not have evidence by means of which detention centers were set up in Romania or airports may have been used for the transportation or detention of terrorist suspects. The Foreign Affairs Ministry in Bucharest also underscored that in order to dispel doubts looming over Romania, mostly in the public sphere, an investigation into the matter has been opened to that end, which is still ongoing.
A day of mourning is being observed today, to pay tribute to the victims of the December 1989 anti-communist Revolution. Today we commemorate 25 years since the army has fired live rounds and used tanks to quash the revolt mounted by the people from Timisoara, who had the courage to take to the streets, staging protest rallies against Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime. Romania’s president-elect Klaus Johanns in Timisoara last night stated that 25 years on, the country needed a new national project. Johannis went on to say reconstruction begins with the pending issues being acknowledged, taking responsibility and coming to terms with the past. We recall the Romanian Revolution broke out in Timisoara on December 16, 1989 and rapidly spread across Romania’s other big cites. The anti-communist movement gained its momentum on December 22nd, the day when Ceausescu’s regime collapsed. The revolution claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people, while 3,400 others were wounded. Romania was the former Eastern Bloc’s only country where bloodshed and violence were reported for the regime change, and where the Communist leaders were executed. Romania’s parliament in Bucharest convened in a solemn session, to commemorate 25 years since the outbreak of the December 1989 Revolution.
The new ministers of the cabinet headed by Social Democrat Victor Ponta have today been sworn in, before president Traian Basescu. Romania’s President stated the Constitution compelled him to accept Social Dialogue and Education Ministers Liviu Pop and Sorin Cimpeanu, respectively, to take their oath. However, Basescu stated the two ministers had a fateful contribution to perpetrating fraud in the public interest, through the destruction of some of Romania’s education institutions. The government this past Monday was validated in the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate’s joint plenary session. The reshuffled cabinet includes representatives of the ruling coalition made of the Social Democratic Party, the National Union for the Progress of Romania and the Conservative Party, added to which is the Liberal Reformist Party, a splinter Liberal group replacing Romania’s National Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, a political group that has recently withdrawn from the governing coalition. Eight new ministers have been included in the reshuffled cabinet, while 14 other ministers have retained their portfolios. In another move, the Parliament’s specialized commissions have analyzed the 2015 state draft budget, a bill the Parliament will pass on December 21.
Romania’s women’s national handball team tonight will be facing Poland, in their last scheduled fixture at the European Championship, hosted by Croatia and Hungary. The Romanians stand no chance to qualify for the competition’s semifinals. Romania’s record at the ongoing edition of the European Handball Championship includes two wins in the games against Ukraine and Spain, a draw against Denmark and two defeats, in the games against Norway and Hungary.
Military prosecutors have initiated criminal proceedings targeting facts and for second-degree murder in the case of the Mobile Emergency Service for Resuscitation and Extrication helicopter that this past Monday crashed in a lake in south-eastern Romania. All four people on board, two pilots from the General Aviation Inspectorate and two Emergency Service medical staff lost their lives. When the accident occurred, the helicopter was flying back from a medical mission.
