February 9, 2015
A roundup of domestic and international news.
România Internațional, 09.02.2015, 12:00
Romanian Foreign Minister, Bogdan Aurescu, is today attending in Brussels a meeting of EU foreign ministers. The topics for discussion will include the EU relations with Africa, the situation in Iraq and Syria and extended sanctions against Russia. With calls growing in the United States to arm the Ukrainian army, German Chancellor Angela Merkel flew to Washington to convince US President Barack Obama to let a European diplomatic initiative resolve the conflict. A peace plan for Ukraine will be discussed on Wednesday in Minsk by the Russian, Ukrainian, French and German leaders. Over 1.5 million people fled their homes and more than 5,300 have been killed since the start of the conflict in Ukraine.
In Bucharest, Prime Minister Victor Ponta and Finance Minister Darius Valcov continue negotiations with Romania’s international lenders. Postponing the liberalisation of natural gas tariffs, something that the representatives of the international financial institutions disagree with, restructuring the companies in the energy sector and possibly the privatisation of some of them, are among the topics to be discussed. Also on Monday, IMF and European Commission representatives will also have meetings with President Klaus Iohannis and the Parliament’s budget-finance committees. While in Romania on an assessment mission until February the 10th, the representatives of the IMF, the European Commission and the World Bank have discussed with the Romanian authorities about recent developments and the economic reform priorities. The current precautionary loan agreement, the third signed with the IMF since the start of the economic crisis in 2009, is due to end this autumn. Its goal is to protect the Romanian economy from prospective shocks in the international financial market.
Romania’s Chamber of Deputies is today deciding on the requests to approve the prosecution and pre-trial detention of MP Elena Udrea, a former minister for regional development and tourism. The requests were filed by anti-corruption prosecutors, who accuse Udrea, among other things, of influence peddling and bribe taking in two corruption cases. Also today the Senate is discussing the request of the General Prosecutor’s Office to green light the prosecution and preventive arrest of the former Constitutional Court Judge Toni Grebla, charged with corruption, and the prosecution of two former economy ministers, Varujan Vosganian and Ion Ariton.
Romanian President Klaus Iohhanis is today presenting in Parliament his first message since he took over the presidential seat on December 21. The head of state has met with party representatives twice so far. The first meeting ended in the signing of a political accord on allocating more funds to the army. The second round of negotiations focused on changing election legislation and the parties’ functioning. President Iohanis said that there were chances for a slution to be found to simplify procedures of answering requests coming from the judiciary to approve prosecution of parliament members.
Military from Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Great Britaina and the United States are today participating in Constanta in southeastern Romania in the opening ceremony of an annual military drill led by the US Marine Corps Forces Europe and Africa. The exercise will be held in the Black Sea region, the Balkans and the Caucasus area. The ceremony also marks the end of the multinational exercise Black Sea Rotational Forces 2014 held in Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia.
