Radio România Internațional

Tag: EU Strategy for the Danube Region

  • July 19, 2018 UPDATE

    July 19, 2018 UPDATE

    Promulgation. Romania’s
    President Klaus Iohannis has announced he has promulgated the law on judicial organization, after having exhausted all challenge procedures. Still,
    the head of state has called on the Romanian Parliament to reintroduce the law
    into the parliamentary circuit as of next autumn. The law is raising many
    question marks and includes unclear provisions, which lack coherence and
    predictability, the president has stated. He has also stressed that the justice
    laws, promoted and endorsed by the left-wing coalition formed by the Social
    Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, would de facto
    push Romania far from the European values. We recall that last week, the Venice
    Commission, in its preliminary opinion, drew attention to the fact that,
    because of the changes brought to the justice laws, the independence of the
    Romanian prosecutors and judges becomes questionable.




    Forecast. The National Prognosis Commission has revised Romania’s economic
    growth rate for this year down to 5.5% from 6.1% in its previous spring
    forecast. The inflation rate has been revised up to 3.5% from 3.2% in spring.






    Danube Region. Romania and Austria are to host the Secretariat of the EU Strategy
    for the Danube Region, whose re-establishment was decided at a meeting of the
    Monitoring Committee of the Danube Transnational Programme and the member
    states national coordinators of the EU Strategy, an event held in Split,
    Croatia. Beginning in September this year, Bucharest and Vienna will open two offices
    of this body. The EU Strategy for the Danube Region is a high-visibility
    political project and Romania’s first large-scale initiative after joining the
    European Union. According to a press release published in Bucharest, Romania’s
    presidency of the EU Council in the first part of next year is an opportunity
    to promote this important framework for macro-regional cooperation on the
    agenda of the Union and to ensure the necessary financial allocations for the
    priorities proposed for the EU Strategy for the Danube Region and the other
    macro-regional strategies.






    Prices. In Romania, the price of
    natural gas for domestic consumers will increase by 6% as of August 1st,
    the National Energy Regulatory Agency announced on Thursday. Also on Thursday,
    the Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovoci announced that the Government is
    discussing a draft decision regarding the flattening of the price of natural
    gas from the domestic production until June 2021. The minister has also stated
    that he would like the same thing for the price of fuels.

    Culture. The Romanian Government on
    Thursday approved the funding of two big cultural projects, worth a total of 12
    million Euros. The two projects are E-culture: Romania’s Digital Library and
    Historical Monuments, Strategic Planning and Optimized Public Policies. Under
    the E-culture project 550,000 cultural resources will be included in Romania’s
    digital library, and an IT platform for the digital library and a catalogue
    titled ‘culturalia.ro’ will be created . Also, some 200,000 cultural resources
    will be included in the europeana.eu portal. The second project’s outcome will
    be a cultural heritage code, as well as a national strategy concerning the
    preservation of historical monuments. The projects will benefit from European
    non-reimbursable funding.




    Brexit. The European Commission has called on the EU countries to
    accelerate preparations for the situation in which Great Britain leaves the
    union without a clear agreement. The Commission has stated that the failure of
    negotiations would seriously affect government affairs and travels. The
    European Commission believes that preparations must be made at all levels, so
    as to cover all potential consequences, in particular with regard to borders,
    transport and data transfers.






    Broadcasting. Radio Free Europe says it will resume news programs in
    Bulgaria and Romania in December this year in a bid to consolidate the media
    landscape in these countries. The station, which is funded by the United States
    Congress, will carry multi-media reports and analyses in Romanian and Bulgarian
    and will collaborate with the local media to expand existing projects that
    promote public accountability and debunk fake news. The station’s Romanian
    language service opened in 1950 and ended in 2008, when Romania had already
    become a member of the European Union and NATO. Historians view as essential
    the station’s contribution to the erosion and final collapse, in 1989, of the
    communist dictatorship in Bucharest. The station still has a Romanian language
    service in the Republic of Moldova. Radio Free Europe broadcasts to 26 million
    people in 20 different countries with restrictions on media freedom and
    where professional journalism is not fully developed.










    Pop music. 18 singers from 15 different countries will be vying for the Grand
    Trophy of the Golden Stag Festival to be held in Brasov, central Romania,
    between the 29th of August and the 2nd of September. The initial line-up was
    15, but organizers decided to expand it following great demand. Romania has
    three representatives, Dora Gaitanovici, Ovidiu Anton and Raluca Blejusca,
    while the Republic of Moldova is represented by Lidia Isac. The Golden Stag
    Festival this year celebrates its 50th anniversary with a special edition and
    65,000 Euros worth of prizes. The festival will come to an end with a Romania
    Centenary show featuring traditional Romanian music and contemporary
    reinterpretations of his genre.

    Football. The Romanian football squad Viitorul Constanta on Thursday
    qualified for the second round of Europa League’s preliminaries, after a 0-0
    draw in the match against Racing FC Union Luxembourg. In the first match, away
    from home, the Romanians had won 2-nil. The other teams representing Romania in
    Europa League are the vice-champion FCSB (formerly known as Steaua Bucharest),
    which will play in the second round against the Slovenian squad NK Rudar
    Velenje and the cup winner CSU Craiova, which will play straight into the third
    preliminary round. Romania’s champions CFR Cluj will take on the Swedish team
    Malmo FF in the second preliminary round of the Champions League.



  • December 14, 2017 UPDATE

    December 14, 2017 UPDATE

    KING MICHAEL I – Three days of national mourning have been declared
    in Romania to honor the memory of its last sovereign, King Michael I. King
    Michael’s coffin will be lying in state
    in the Throne Room of the Royal Palace in Bucharest until Saturday, when the
    funeral is scheduled. The body of King Michael was brought to Romania on
    Wednesday, and the coffin was taken for a few hours to the Royal Peles Castle
    in Sinaia mountain resort, where Romanian and Moldovan officials paid their
    last respects to the former King. Many people lined the route of the funeral
    procession between the airport and the mountain resort of Sinaia to bid
    farewell to the last King of Romania who ruled between 1940 and 1947. King
    Michael died on December 5 in Switzerland at the age of 96. He will be laid to
    rest at the royal necropolis in Curtea de Arges (in the south). The funerals
    will be attended by personalities from all over the world. According to the
    site romaniaregala.ro, attending the funerals, besides the Royal Family of
    Romania, will be representatives of the Royal Families of Great Britain,
    Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Jordan, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Bahrain, Bulgaria,
    Greece, Serbia, Albania, France, Prussia and Portugal. Also attending the
    funerals will be representatives of the Imperial Families of Russia, Austria
    and Germany, the Grand Duchy of Baden and the Princely House de Ligne.


















    BREXIT – The
    developments in the Brexit process and the issues caused by migration are the main
    topics on the agenda of the winter European Council which started on Thursday
    in Brussels. Romania is represented by President Klaus Iohannis. The EU leaders
    will look at the progress made in the negotiations with London in three
    specific fields, namely citizens’ rights, dialogue with Ireland and Great
    Britain’s financial commitments to the EU budget. The participants will also
    adopt the guidelines that will facilitate the passing to the 2nd stage of
    Brexit negotiations, in the context in which the EU chief negotiator Michel
    Barnier confirmed that sufficient progress was reported in the 1st stage. On
    the sidelines of the European Council, President Iohannis will participate in
    the Euro+ Summit, which will be attended also by EU countries that are not in
    the Euro zone. As regards security and defense, the summit will discuss the
    instrument of Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO). President Iohannis will
    reiterate Bucharest’s commitment to help render PESCO operational and will show
    that the implementation of this instrument should lead to a more efficient
    development of military capabilities and to an increased cohesion among EU
    states. President Iohannis will also advocate the deepening and extension of
    EU-NATO cooperation, the presidential administration reports.


















    JUSTICE – The Romanian Chamber of Deputies has passed the
    amendments modifying the justice laws that refer to the organization of the
    judiciary and the functioning of the Superior Council of Magistracy. The bill
    on the organization of the judiciary provides, among other things, for the
    setting up of a unit for investigating prosecutors and judges and for the
    possibility of solutions adopted by prosecutors being rejected by their
    superiors, if the latter consider them illegal or ungrounded. The second bill
    that was passed, related to the functioning of the Superior Council of
    Magistracy, states that the Judicial Inspection, which will remain a part of
    the institution, is the only body allowed to take disciplinary actions against
    a magistrate, eliminating from this procedure the justice minister and the
    president of the High Court of Cassation and Justice. The two bills will be
    sent to the Senate, which is currently analyzing, in emergency procedure, the
    bill on the status of magistrates.






    BUDGET – The
    joint budget and finance committees of the Romanian Parliament on Thursday
    continued debates on the budgets to be allotted in 2018 to the main public
    institutions. The committees endorsed the budgets earmarked for justice, defense, internal affairs and
    agriculture. The majority coalition wants to finalize debates and
    the joint committees’ report by Saturday, so as to be able to debate the draft
    budget law during Monday’s plenary session. The final vote on the 2018 budget
    and social security bill is scheduled for December 21. The budget was built on
    an estimated 5.5% economic growth rate,
    and additional revenues are to be distributed to healthcare, education and
    investment. The government has also allotted resources for the rise in the
    minimum salary and pensions. The opposition has contested the budget, claiming
    that revenues are overestimated.






    FDI – Foreign Direct
    Investments in Romania went up by 17% in the first ten months of 2017, as
    compared to the same period in 2016, reaching 4.09 billion Euro, according to
    data made public on Thursday by the National Bank of Romania. Between January -
    October 2017, the current account of the balance of payments registered a
    deficit of 5.3 billion Euros, 87% more than in the same period in 2016, the
    Central Bank has also announced. Romania’s external debt grew by 1.3 billion
    Euros in the first ten months of this year.




    EUSDR – Romania will hold the
    presidency of the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR) between November
    2018- November 2019, the Romanian Minister Delegate for European Affairs Victor
    Negrescu announced on Thursday. He said that the term will coincide with the
    Romanian presidency of the EU Council as of January 2019. EUSDR is one of the
    four EU macro-strategies, co-initiated by Romania and Austria and launched in
    2011. It was developed in order for the Danube Region countries and
    stakeholders to address common challenges together. The participating countries
    are Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, the Czcek Republic, Croatia, Germany, Slovakia,
    Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia-Hertegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, the Republic of
    Moldova and Ukraine.




    PATRIOT
    – Romania has already paid for the first Patriot missile system and next week
    will make another payment, this time for armored vehicles. The announcement
    was made on Thursday by the Romanian Defense Minister Mihai Fifor in the
    Senate’s budget-finance committee. Romania wants to purchase six Patriot
    systems, worth a total of 3.9 billion dollars, VAT not included. The first
    system costs 756 million dollars. The Patriot air and missile defense systems
    will become part of the Romanian Army’s equipment in the second half of 2019,
    and the first one will be rendered operational in mid 2020.






    NATO – Canadian pilots at the Mihail Kogalniceanu airbase
    in the southeast of Romania on Thursday participated alongside Romanian pilots
    in an Air Policing drill, which is part of the NATO Plan to strengthen the
    eastern flank of the Alliance. MiG-21 LanceR and CF-18 Hornet planes carrying
    missiles are prepared to intercept potential unidentified aircraft nearing
    Romania’s airspace. The drill is meant for the joint training of
    military, with a view to meeting NATO’s specific inter-operability requirements
    and boosting the level of cooperation with the allies.