Radio România Internațional

Tag: border police

  • October 14, 2016

    October 14, 2016

    LASER – Investment in the laser in Magurele (southern Romania) can generate over 600 million euros in turnover and can create about 6-7 thousand new jobs, Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has today announced upon the presentation of a survey. Ciolos has today participated in a conference on development entitled ‘Laser Valley-Land of Lights’. According to Ciolos, the meeting was aimed at motivating and involving, besides the government and research institutions, the local public authorities and the business environment. The Prime Minister has insisted on the necessity of connecting through infrastructure the commune of Magurele to Bucharest and the Henri Coanda airport to better capitalize on the laser’s potential. On Tuesday, during a visit to Romania, the European Commissioner for development, science and innovation Carlos Moedas pleaded for a better promotion of the world’s largest laser, situated in Magurele, southern Romania.



    DOCUMENTS – EU interior ministers, who have convened in Luxembourg for a new session of the Justice and Home Affairs Council, have given the green light to a new type of travel document aimed at easing the repatriation of illegal immigrants from Europe. The decision has been made because the process of returning migrants has so far been hindered by the absence of travel documents. Another issue on the council’s agenda was the implementation of regulations for the new FRONTEX — the European Border and Coast Guard Agency. On this occasion, the Interior Ministry in Bucharest, Dragos Tudorache, has underlined the importance of setting up the new agency, to which Romania is to contribute with 75 police guards.



    VISIT – Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu is in Bangkok, Thailand, to participate in the 21st ministerial meeting EU – the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (EU-ASEAN). According to the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest, high on the agenda are the latest developments in Europe’s vicinity, the Middle East and North Africa, the phenomenon of migration and fighting international terrorism. On the sidelines of this conference the Romanian Foreign Minister will be having a series of bilateral meetings with his counterparts from ASEAN countries. As of Tuesday, Comanescu has been going on a diplomatic tour to Asia, which also took him to Indonesia where he held talks with his Indonesian counterpart Retno L.P. Marsudi about stepping up bilateral dialogue in the fields of politics, economy and trade. The two officials have attended the ceremony of signing a memorandum of understanding between the National Trade Chambers of the two countries.



    PROSECUTION — Romania’s President, Klaus Iohannis, on Friday issued a favourable opinion on and endorsed the National Anti-Corruption Directorate’s request to start prosecution against former deputy prime minister and interior minister, Gabriel Oprea, for manslaughter. The request was submitted two days ago, when Oprea’s mandate of Romanian Senator came to a close, following his resignation, tendered on October 1. Under the Romanian law, the start of prosecution against people who have been or are currently ministers, for acts committed during their term in office, and who were not MPs at the time of the notification, is conditioned by a favourable presidential opinion. Policeman Bogdan Gigina lost his life last year in a motorcycle accident, while he was part of the motorcade of the then interior minister, Gabriel Oprea. Oprea was reportedly on a private trip and consequently he was not entitled to have an official motorcade.



    MIGRATION – Border policemen in Giurgiu, southern Romania on Friday discovered seven Turkish citizens and two Syrians with ages between 16 and 51 hidden in a truck with the intention to illegally cross the border into Romania. According to the Romanian-Bulgarian protocol, the migrants have been taken over by the Bulgarian border police for investigation. In the past weeks, the Romanian authorities have taken additional measures to tighten security at its southern and western borders after several smaller groups of migrants tried to illegally cross the border into Romania.




  • The migrant issue

    The migrant issue

    Humanitarian crises caused by conflicts in the Middle East are deepening and causing increasing concern worldwide. Such conflicts have triggered mass migration such as that towards Europe, which in 2015 saw over one million refugees and migrants. Romania has so far been spared that extreme phenomenon.



    This country has not been on the refugees’ route towards the West, neither has it been a favourite destination. Things are changing though, because, on the one hand, some of those routes have been closed and on the other hand, countries in Europe have agreed to share the burden and take over some of the refugees who made it to the West.



    Anyway, the border police and the General Inspectorate for Immigration have cautioned against the mounting pressure at Romania’s borders, particularly on the Danube, a river that has unfortunately turned into a death trap for some of those refugees.



    Incidents involving groups of refugees brought in by Serbian guides have been reported almost on a daily basis at Romania’s western borders. But who are those immigrants and what is their new route towards the West? Here is Petre Nicola, spokesman for the Territorial Inspectorate of the Border Police in Timisoara.




    Petre Nicola: “Migrants are generally of Afro-Asian descent and their main destinations are countries in Western Europe, via Serbia-Romania-Hungary. According to their statements, they are seeking a better standard of living in those countries and are only transiting Romania.”




    Either using the Bulgarian or the Serbian route, those migrants are trying to make it to Hungary via Romania in order to avoid border barriers set up by Hungary, says Catalin Bercaru, project manager with the International Organisation for Migration.



    Catalin Bercaru: “Figures have started to increase in terms of illegal migration, which is only natural, because when a wall is set up in a place, migrants will obviously try to find another route to avoid it.”



    Under the circumstances the latest immigration statistics have caused increased concern with the authorities in Bucharest, as Fabian Badila, spokesman for the Border Police admits.




    Fabian Badila: “Since the beginning of the year until now, surveillance and control operations carried out by my colleagues from the border police have revealed that 670 foreign nationals have been involved in the phenomenon of illegal migration.”




    These days migration is also high on the agenda of the UN General Assembly, which has convened in its first session on that issue. Donald Tusk, president of the European Council is to address the Assembly on behalf of the EU on Wednesday and will be participating in a series of sessions on the refugee and migrant issue.




    Romania is represented by Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos accompanied by Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu. The Romanian Foreign Minister on Sunday delivered a speech during a UN session underscoring the importance of international cooperation in managing that phenomenon, arguing that emphasis must be laid on addressing the causes of the phenomenon.

  • September 14, 2016

    September 14, 2016

    ELECTION Today is the last day in which the Romanian citizens abroad can enlist in the election registry for the upcoming Parliamentary election on December 11th. The Foreign Ministry in Bucharest recalls that on the basis of their enlisting, the Romanians residing in other countries could call for the setting up of a polling station in their locality of residence or domicile. According to data released by the Permanent Election Authority about 9100 applications in this respect have so far been validated, although the number of Romanians living abroad stands at three million.



    FOOTBALL Romanian football champion team Astra Giurgiu on Thursday take on Austria Vienna in the Europa League group stage debut fixture. Also part of the same group are Czech squad Viktoria Plzen and the famous Italian team AS Roma. Also on Thursday, vice-champions Steaua Bucharest play their debut group fixture against Turkish contenders Osmanlispor, away from home. The forthcoming fixtures will see Steaua taking on Spain’s Villareal and Swiss side FC Zurich. Astra Giurgiu and Steaua Bucharest reached the Europa League’s group stage having been eliminated from the preliminary stages of Europe’s most important inter-clubs competition, the Champions League. Also playing in the Europa League preliminaries, Viitorul Constanta in the southeast, Pandurii Targu Jiu in the southwest and CSMS Iasi in the east have in turn been edged out of the Europa League’s group stage.



    STATE OF THE UNION The European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker has today said in his State of the Union speech that it respects but regrets the UK’s decision of leaving the bloc. He underlined that the EU is not at risk because of the Brexit. The EU official has urged the UK government to trigger exit talks “as quickly as possible” in order to allow a new relationship with Britain. He pleaded for rising integration in Europe, which shouldn’t ignore the interests of the national states.



    NETWORK A migrant smuggling network operating on Romania’s western border has been dismantled by border police in Cenad, Timis county. 24 Syrian migrants have been detained in the operation as well as four guides of Serbian nationality, a border police communiqué says. The number of migrants trying to cross the Serbian border to Romania on their way to the West has significantly increased of late. 130 migrants attempting to illegally cross the border between the two countries have been detained since the beginning of September, double the number on the entire month of August.



    ORDINANCE The government in Bucharest is today passing an emergency ordinance on the issue of the mandatory liability insurance premiums, which would stipulate, among other things the freezing of these premiums for a period of six months, Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos has today announced. Ciolos said the Financial Surveillance Authority must come with a reference price within 30 days set on the basis of an average price calculation. The Romanian official added that the ordinance stipulates the premium can be concluded for a month and suspended upon requests from clients. Road transporters are to announce whether they will continue their protest tomorrow, when 5,000 cargo trucks are expected to picket the government building in Bucharest. Transporters have lately staged a series of protests on various motorways in Romania against the staggering prices of these insurances.


  • Migrants and fences

    Migrants and fences


    The Hungarian authorities are considering the possibility of building a barbed wire fence at the border with Romania if the routes used by migrants to reach Western Europe were to change. The Hungarian prime ministers chief homeland security advisor, Gyorgy Bakondi, said that given the fact that last weekend the Romanian authorities had detained several migrants trying to reach Hungary, the Romanian Police and Gendarmerie were carrying out an intensive activity to guard the Hungarian and the Serbian borders. Bakondi said that the emergence of new routes from Serbia or Bulgaria to Romania must be avoided, since that would require more efforts from the Hungarian authorities like those made at the countrys Southern border.



    Gyorgy Bakondi said that if need be, a barbed wire fence might be built at the border with Romania too, recalling that the designing and layout of the site had already been completed, the component parts of the fence were stored in the area and the Hungarian Army had a thorough experience in implementing such works.



    Last autumn, the government in Budapest decided to erect such fences at its borders with Serbia and Croatia and introduce other strict regulations, providing for illegal migrants detained along an 8-km-wide land strip along the Southern border to be taken beyond the barbed wire fences. Of late, Hungarian government officials have often focused on the issue of migration, trying to talk as many citizens as possible into participating in the referendum on the mandatory refugee relocation quotas, due on October 2nd.



    On Monday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban criticized again the European refugee policy, which in his opinion, jeopardizes Europe. Orban went on to say that the aim of the referendum was the defense of Hungary, the only European country where people will be able to express their views in a referendum on migration. The first response to the Hungarian officials statements has come from the foreign minister of Luxembourg, Jean Asselborn, who condemns Budapests stance on the refugee crisis, saying that Hungary should be kicked out of the European Union. “The fence which Hungary is building to keep out refugees is getting longer, higher and more dangerous. Hungary is not far from issuing an order to shoot refugees, Asselborn said.


    (Translated by AM Palcu)