Tag: adoptions

  • 09.06.2019 (mise à jour)

    09.06.2019 (mise à jour)

    Moldova – C’est une situation tendue et plutôt confuse en République de Moldova voisine, où deux gouvernements se revendiquent la légitimité et s’accusent l’un l’autre de s’être emparé du pouvoir. Samedi, le Parlement de Chisinau et le président pro-russe Igor Dodon ont désigné un nouveau gouvernement, dirigé par la pro-européenne Maia Sandu. La Cour Constitutionnelle a pour sa part considéré cette démarche comme non constitutionnelle et a désigné le premier ministre Pavel Filip au poste de chef d’Etat par intérim. Ce dernier a convoqué des élections parlementaires anticipées le 6 septembre prochain. La situation actuelle intervient au bout de trois mois et demi de tentatives échouées de constituer une majorité parlementaire, suite aux élections parlementaires lors desquelles les socialistes pro-russes d’Igor Dodon ont remporté 35 des 101 sièges de députés.Dans ce contexte, dimanche, le président de la Roumanie, Klaus Iohannis a adressé à toutes les forces politiques moldaves un appel ferme au respect de la démocratie et de l’Etat de droit. « La stabilité de la République de Moldova est essentielle pour la poursuite du parcours européen de ce pays qui s’est engagé à mener à bout un ample processus de réformes, y compris en ce qui concerne l’Etat de droit et la bonne gouvernance », lit-on dans un communiqué de l’Administration présidentielle de Bucarest. De même, le gouvernement de Bucarest affirme suivre de près les évolutions politiques au pays voisin, dont il appelle les forces politiques à respecter le processus démocratique. A son tour, la Commission européenne a fait un appel au calme en République de Moldova. Dans une déclaration commune, la cheffe de la diplomatie européenne, Federica
    Mogherini et le commissaire européen à la Politique de voisinage, Iohannes Hahn,
    affirment que l’UE est prête à collaborer avec le gouvernement de Chisinau légitime
    d’un point de vue démocratique, sur la base d’un engagement réciproque face aux
    réformes et aux principes fondamentaux consacrés dans l’accord d’association.

    Finances – Le ministre roumain des Finances, Eugen Teodorovici, se trouvait à la tête de la délégation du Conseil de l’Union européenne à la réunion G20 des ministres des finances et des gouverneurs des banques centrales, qui s’est tenue samedi et dimanche à Fukuoka, au Japon. L’occasion pour M Teodorovici, en sa qualité de président en exercice du Conseil pour les affaires économiques et financières (ECOFIN) de présenter la position de l’UE concernant le financement dans le domaine du développement et des investissements en infrastructure, précise dans un communiqué, le ministère des finances de Bucarest. D’autre thèmes étaient à retrouver à l’agenda de la réunion, tels l’économie globale, l’imposition internationale, les déséquilibres mondiaux ou encore le vieillissement de la population.

    IT – 20 compagnies participeront à une mission économique censée faire la promotion des produits roumains du domaine des technologies de l’information et des communications aux Etats-Unis, du 10 au 14 juin. Selon un communiqué du ministère roumain pour le Milieu des affaires, le commerce et l’entrepreneuriat, les sociétés en question participeront au sommet Select USA Investment Summit qui se tiendra à Washington du 10 au 12 juin, ainsi qu’au Select USA Spin Off, à San Francisco, les 13 et 14 juin. Parmi les principaux objectifs de cette mission mentionnons : accroître la visibilité des compagnies roumaines du domaine, promouvoir les produits roumains, identifier de nouvelles opportunités d’affaires et établir de nouveaux partenariats de longue durée. Accueilli par le secrétaire américain au Commerce, Wilbur Ross, le sommet Select USA Investment Summit est l’événement le plus prestigieux consacré aux investissements étrangers directs aux Etats-Unis. Il représente une plate-forme de mise en contact des compagnies étrangères avec les organisations américaines du développement économique, dans le but de faciliter les investissements dans les affaires et la création d’emplois.

    Education financière – La santé et l’éducation des enfants sont les principales préoccupations des Roumains. Côtés priorités, ils mettent en première position les factures mensuelles. Les investissements dans leur propre éducation et les économies sont à la fin de leur liste, constate une récente étude. De même, seul 1 sur 5 adultes comprend les produits financiers de base, ce qui place la Roumanie en queue du peloton européen pour ce qui est de l’éducation financière. Les assurances vie sont perçues comme des produits complexes, difficile à comprendre et trop chers. 40% des Roumains interrogés considèrent que tous les produits financiers se ressemblent. La moitié d’entre eux se déclarent peu informés au sujet des assurances en général. Il s’agit d’une étude téléphonique réalisée début mai.


    Adoptions – Des centaines de personnes de l’étranger, adoptées depuis la Roumanie dans les années ’90 ont réussi, ces 4 dernières années, à retrouver leurs parents biologiques par le biais d’une page Facebook. Cette page a été créée par Ileana Cunniffe Băiescu, une Roumaine originaire du département de Buzau (centre-est) et établie en Irlande. Adoptée il y a 26 ans, la femme était en train de chercher son frère, qu’elle a fini par retrouver à Manchester, en Grande Bretagne. Créée en janvier 2015, la page s’intitule « The never forgotten Romanian children » (Les enfants roumains jamais oubliés) et elle est suivie par quelque 60.000 personnes. Jusqu’ici 1500 demandes de recherche ont été faites et environ 80% des cas ont été solutionnés, affirme Ileana Cunniffe Băiescu.

    Météo – Dans les 24 prochaines heures, la météo sera toujours instable en Roumanie, mais il fera chaud quand même. Une alerte à l’instabilité atmosphérique accentuée concerne le sud, l’est, une partie du centre et les montagnes jusqu’à mardi dans la soirée. On y attend des pluies à verse et des phénomènes orageux, les précipitations pouvant dépasser par endroits les 40l par mètre carré. Les températures maximales iront de 25 à 33 degrés.

  • Adoptions back in the spotlight

    Adoptions back in the spotlight

    In Romania, only
    3,500 of the minors living in placement centers or in the care of maternal
    assistants, therefore in the so called child protection system, are eligible for adoption. The rest of them,
    out of a total number of 58,000 children, live separated from their families,
    in the same system, but they do have relatives. And yet, why do all those
    children end up in out-of-home state care? One possible explanation for that is
    provided by statistical data: 43% of the minors in the protection system end up
    there because of poverty. For those who have relatives, the authorities draw up
    personalized plans so that such children can be reintegrated in their extended
    families. However, reintegration occurs is much fewer cases than intended,
    while adoption – the solution for the other children – is too long a process to stand real chances of success. The
    current Adoption Act, in force since
    2004, is based on the principle that everything should be done so that minors
    can be brought up by their relatives. Therefore, a child becomes adoptable only
    after their fourth degree relatives have been found and contacted, and if they
    refused to take care of that child.


    Finding a child’s’
    relatives can be a cumbersome and lengthy process, which is only one of the
    causes leading to the entire process being slowed down. There are cases when
    the adoption process as such fails to be accomplished, unfortunately, and the
    president of the National Authority for Child Protection Rights and Adoptions
    Gabriela Coman admits to that.


    Gabriela Coman: Children coming from all sorts of communities and families can be easily
    placed in the protection system. About 5,000 children get into the system every
    year, a figure which in recent years has remained constant. The period of time
    these children spend in the system, be it in the care of a maternal assistant,
    in placement or foster care, is
    unacceptably long, 6.5 years on average. If we look at statistics we see a big
    difference between the number of adoptable children and those who are actually
    adopted, between the number of the families with an adoptive family certificate
    and the number of children who are adopted. Moreover, most families want to adopt
    small children. 85 % of them are
    searching for a child younger than 6, in good health, but the number of such
    children in the system is much lower than the
    potential adoptive families
    would have liked.


    The Adoption Act has been amended many
    times. It has been recently revised thanks to the counseling offered by civil
    society organizations and also by UNICEF’s office in Romania, whose
    representative in Bucharest Sandie Blanchet has hailed all the legal changes
    that have occurred in the aforementioned law.


    Sandie Blanchet: We know that has been recognized by Romania, many times. The
    process today is too slow. I takes on average, and this is on average, 15
    months for a child to be adopted and we foresee that with the revision, this
    delay will be reduced considerably. We also welcome that the revised law uses a
    new measure, some kind of a parental leave that will be given to one of the
    parents of the adoptive family, this leave will be for a maximum of one year,
    and the parent will also receive financial allowance of a maximum of one
    thousand seven hundred lei a month. Finally, I would like to highlight the fact
    that we should be very careful about targets and deadlines. The objective of
    putting, for example, some time frame around the process is not to make sure
    that all adoptions are conducted within that
    time frame. It is not the ultimate ejective. The ultimate objective is
    to make sure that the child’s situation improves, that the child finds a family
    that is a suitable family.


    Under other
    amendments to the aforementioned law, the period of time during which relatives
    up to the fourth degree can be searched for and the child can be
    integrated into the extended family has
    been shortened from one year to six months. Moreover, the two-year deadline for
    a child to be considered adoptable no
    longer exits. This status of adoptable child, issued by a court of law,
    shall be effective up until the conclusion of the adoption procedure or until
    the child turns 14. After the age of 14, the child will have their say as
    regards their adoption. Also, the validity of the adoptive family license has
    been extended from one to two years. In fact, the trials and tribulations the
    prospective parents must go through during the adoption process are quite
    dramatic. Nicoleta Cristea-Brunel, a Romanian woman residing in France who has
    recently returned to Romania to adopt a child, told us about this painful
    process, which, for her, was a failure.


    Nicoleta Cristea – Brunel: What is going on in Romania’s child protection system is tantamount to a
    silent genocide. There are roughly 60,000 children in the system who cannot
    grow up in a family, for the simple reason that most of them never become eligible
    for adoption. It is so frustrating, so
    painful. I, for one, being somebody who wanted to adopt a child, I simply
    couldn’t go to all those and see the children, because I would’ve wanted to
    take them all home with me. But that was not possible, not only because I would
    have been incapable of bringing up 60,000 children, but because I was not granted
    the right to adopt at least one child. However, I went at all lengths to
    achieve that. I went through a process that, at some points, got virtually
    Kafkaesque, only to eventually be able to get the infamous adoption license.
    But that was all. The entire process by
    which I tried to adopt a child in Romania only resulted in this piece of paper.
    And for a year I kept it on my desk and
    I would jump every time my phone rang, thinking I would be invited to see a
    child. But the call never came. No child could be found for me, although in
    Romania, four children on average are abandoned in maternity wards every day.


    Meanwhile,
    Nicoleta Cristea-Brunel had a baby girl, through IVF, and set up the SOS
    Infertilitatea Association, which promotes the rights of families who want to
    have children, whether through adoption or through assisted reproductive
    technology. Quite familiar with the scope of the Romanian bureaucracy, she is
    rather reserved as regards the revision of the Adoption Act.

    Nicoleta
    Cristea-Brunel: I find these amendments welcome,
    particularly those concerning the maternity leave for adoptive parents. As it
    usually happens, most children are over 2 years old when adopted, and parents
    didn’t get a day of leave, believe it or not. You would take the child from the
    carer, and then you would have to let them with the baby-sitter or grandparents
    so that you could go to work. The adjustment period was not taken into account.
    The other changes are also welcome, but I first want to see them implemented.
    Many things look fine on paper. The text of the law also stipulates that court
    rulings on adoption cases are to be passed within ten days, but this never
    actually happens.


    Recently passed by
    the Chamber of Deputies, the amendments to the Adoption Act are pending for
    promulgation by the President of Romania and publication in the Official
    Journal of Romania, in order to take effect.











  • A la Une de la presse roumaine 17.03.2016

    A la Une de la presse roumaine 17.03.2016

    Plein de sujets intéressants dans la presse roumaine ce jeudi. «17 mars. Le premier jour sans fumée de cigarette». L’occasion pour la presse de se pencher sur un sondage de l’OMS qui place la Roumanie en tête du classement de la consommation d’alcool et de tabac parmi les jeunes. On parle aussi d’un projet censé réduire l’abandon scolaire : de l’argent pour les lycéens à condition de ne pas sécher les cours. Par ailleurs, la nouvelle loi des adoptions vient d’être votée, elle simplifie le processus des adoptions, dans un pays où seulement 562 enfants sur 60.000 ont été adoptés en 2015. Enfin, la presse décrit une journée de la vie en Roumanie : la population diminue de 100 personnes, l’économie augmente de 2 milliards de lei, la construction d’autoroutes avance de 66m, on coupe 14 hectares de forêt, et la liste se poursuit.

  • February 3, 2016 UPDATE

    February 3, 2016 UPDATE

    PROSECUTION – The Romanian Senate has complied with the request of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate regarding the prosecution of the senator of the National Union for the Progress of Romania, Gabriel Oprea, former deputy prime minister for national security and interior minister. The decision was passed with 102 ayes and 31 nays. Oprea is facing two charges of abuse in office and is accused of obtaining undue benefits for himself or for another person during his term in office. One of the offences is the use of the Interior Ministrys human and material resources to illegally ensure the ministers police escort. The second offence is related to the conclusion of an agreement under which the Prosecutor General, Tiberiu Nitu, allegedly benefited from a motorcade. Prosecutors say that Tiberiu Nitu, who resigned on Tuesday, is not under investigation. The law stipulates that only the president, the prime minister and the two speakers of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, respectively, have the right to a motorcade, whereas ministers can use it only in emergencies.



    CORRUPTION– The mayor of the south-eastern Romanian city of Braila, Social Democrat Aurel Simionescu, was taken into custody on Wednesday by the anti-corruption prosecutors who accuse him of having favoured a consortium of firms, at a tender to modernize a boulevard. The facts, assimilated to corruption deeds, were reportedly made with the assistance of civil servants subordinated to the mayor, as well as with the complicity of the representatives of the firms interested in getting the public works contracts. According to judicial sources, the prejudice brought to the local administration stands at some 9 million Euros.



    JUSTICE– The Romanian government on Wednesday decided to suspend until September 1, 2016, under an emergency ordinance, the enforcement of the legal provision reducing the sentences of detainees publishing alleged scientific works. The decision comes after justice minister, Raluca Pruna, has justified her calls for the repealing of this legal provision, laid down in the Romanian law since 1969, through the fact that in the last couple of years, abuses have been reported entailing intellectual imposture in penitentiaries. The phenomenon has gained momentum: whereas 90 works were written in 2014, as many as 340 works were published in 2015, minister Pruna explained.



    SECURITY IN EUROPE–The Romanian Foreign Ministry hails the United States announcement on a four-fold increase in the budget destined for the European Reassurance Initiative/ERI for 2017, as well on its determination to assure a robust American military presence in Europe. According to the Romanian Foreign Ministry, the announcement comes as a confirmation of the United States strong commitment to Europes security, tightening NATOs collective defense measures and discouraging risk factors. The implementation of the measures announced by the US will contribute significantly to consolidating Romanias and the other allies security in the face of security provocations in our region, a press release issued by the Romanian Foreign Ministry on Wednesday shows. The Pentagon has announced it increases its budget for Europe, up to 3.4 billion dollars, in the new security strategic context, marked by Russias actions and the ascension of the Islamic State terrorist group. Allied within NATO, Bucharest and Washington are tied by a bilateral strategic partnership.



    DEFENSE – Romania and France are supporting each others efforts to fight international terrorism, and the Romanian authorities reiterate their solidarity with France, in the difficult context generated by the recent terror attacks in Paris. This was the conclusion of the talks held in Bucharest on Wednesday by Romanian defense minister, Mihnea Motoc, and the Chief of Staff of the French Army, general Pierre de Villiers. A focal point on the agenda of the talks was the future NATO Summit in Warsaw, against the backdrop of the strategic adjustment process carried out by the North Atlantic Alliance. The French military official also met with his Romanian counterpart, general Nicolae Ciuca, together with whom he approached the security development situation in the Black Sea area and the participation of Romanian military in theatres of operations.



    ROMANIAN ECONOMY – The French credit insurance company Coface has maintained the B country risk rating for Romania, which is indicative of an unstable macroeconomic environment, the companys 2015 macroeconomic Report says. “Despite the macroeconomic balance, the setback in the transition to the Euro and the compliance with the nominal convergence criteria, Romania is still vulnerable because of the structural character of domestic microeconomic imbalance, the Report shows. According to the Report, the factors of the imbalance are the very high level of the trade credit, the great interdependence between companies, the speedy interruption of the activity of many companies as compared to the recently registered companies and the high level of instruments that were refused upon payment. According to Coface, the strengths are the relatively large domestic market, qualified and cheap work force, a significance currency reserve and the relatively stable national currency as against the Euro, the public debt level below the EU average and a low energy dependence. Coface estimates a 4.2% economic growth for Romania this year.



    ADOPTIONS – The Commission for labour and social protection of the Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday passed the draft law shortening the adoption time and simplifying the adoption procedures, so that a child could be adopted more quickly. To facilitate a better relationship between children and their new family, the Commission increased the accommodation leave granted to parents from 3 to 12 months. If within a year, parents failed to adopt a child, they are now given one more year to do it.



    TOURIST INDUSTRY – According to the National Institute for Statistics, 9.8 million tourists were accommodated in various units in Romania in 2015, by 17.2% more than in 2014. 77.4% of the total number of tourists were Romanian and 22.6% were foreign, the figures being similar to the ones in 2014. Three quarters of the foreign tourists came from Europe. The average stay of Romanian tourists was 2.5 days and that of foreign tourists was 2 days. 36.3% of the tourists stayed in hotels, 21.8% in villas and 20.4% in hostels.


    (Translated by Diana Vijeu and Ana-Maria Palcu)