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SESSION The Senate and Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest on Wednesday went on their first Parliamentary session this year. Draft laws on complying with the terms assumed through the National Plan of Recovery and Resilience are high on the agenda. Leaders of the main ruling parties, the Social Democratic and the National Liberal Party, have also announced among their legislative priorities, several projects on education and the special pensions reform. The Liberals want to raise the ceiling for pension taxation and the local and Parliamentary election of 2024 to merge. The Social-Democrats have announced they are working on a new ruling programme and the Social-Democratic president Marcel Ciolacu who is going to take over the position of Prime Minister, has announced the idea of cutting labour taxes and increasing the taxation level for the companies with huge profits. The opposition USR and Force of the Right have tabled a simple motion against Interior Minister Lucian Bode entitled "Romania deserves better than thieves on public jobs", amid forgery allegation concerning his PhD thesis. The Senate has endorsed a declaration reiterating its commitment to strengthening legislative efforts to commemorate the Holocaust victims and underlines the need for the involvement of all state institutions and citizens so that human rights may be observed.
PROTEST Roughly one thousand employees from Romania's education system took to the streets on Wednesday to protest the low salaries in their line of work. According to the protesters, the nonteaching staff makes the only category of state employees who hasn't yet reached the pay level stipulated by the 2022 law. Salaries for nonteaching employees are ranging between 366 and 468 euros and trade unions in the country's education system have called on the government to endorse a law allowing the nonteaching personnel to get proper pay.
UKRAINE The Russian invasion forces are making small progress on the front in eastern Ukraine - international news agencies report. Their main target remains the city of Bakhmut, which they have been trying to seize for months without success. Both Bakhmut and the neighboring villages of Kliškiivka and Kurdiumivka, located south of the city, came under new Russian fire. According to the Ukrainian military, though, the Russians allegedly got stuck near the town of Avdiivka, the second focal point of their attacks in the disputed Donetsk region. Troop movements are also registered in Lyman, a city recaptured by the Ukrainians in October. In an unusually detailed intelligence update, British Ministry of Defense experts, who are constantly monitoring the situation on the front, note that Russian forces have advanced several hundred meters across a river towards the town of Vuhledar, and recorded made small wins. Specialists say that Moscow's troops would like to attract the Ukrainian forces defending Bakhmut to Vuhledar.
VISIT The President of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, will be paying a formal visit to Baku, Azerbaijan, on February 2-3, at the invitation of his counterpart, Ilham Aliyev. The two presidents will open the Ministerial Meeting of the Southern Gas Corridor Advisory Council. The visit by the Romanian president comes in continuation of the very good talks held with the Azerbaijani president, in Bucharest, in December 2022, on the occasion of their participation in the signing ceremony of the Agreement between the Governments of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Romania and Hungary regarding the Strategic Partnership in the field of green energy development and transport. In Baku, the state of implementation of regional interconnection projects such as the submarine electricity transmission cable will be assessed and the initiation of similar projects in the digital field will be addressed. Azerbaijan is the first country in the South Caucasus region with which Romania raised bilateral relations to the level of Strategic Partnership in 2009.
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