NATO Romania, as a NATO member country and strategic partner of the US,
benefits from all the security guarantees that it needs, in the context of the
most serious crisis since the fall of the Iron Curtain. The statement was made
by Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis on Friday, during a visit he made
together with the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and the Alliance’s
Deputy Secretary General, Mircea Geoana, at the military base in Mihail
Kogalniceanu, south-eastern Romania. The officials met with military personnel
from allied nations deployed to Romania. In his turn, Stoltenberg said
the presence of NATO troops in Romania is important because it is a powerful
demonstration of NATO unity. Around 1,000 American military were relocated to
Romania, amid concerns raised by the Russian military build-up at the Ukrainian
border. France has also voiced willingness to deploy troops to Romania. A NATO
member since 2004, Romania was already hosting 900 American, 250 Polish and 140
Italian troops. A unit of the US Air Forces
in Europe (USAFE), comprising around 150 troops and 8 F-16 Fighting Falcons, will
have joint training missions with troops and aircraft of the Romanian
Air Forces for 2 weeks, as of Friday. According to a news release, the US
aircraft will also conduct enhanced air policing missions, jointly with Romanian
troops and with the Italian Air Forces unit deployed to Romania in December.
CORONAVIRUS The number of new Covid-19 infections continues to drop in Romania.
On Friday, the Group for Strategic Communication announced 22,737 new cases and
132 deaths, five of which from an earlier date. The Romanian authorities
consider easing the restrictions taken in the context of the pandemic, but in a
gradual manner, as did the countries that have already overcome the peak of the
current wave, the head of the Department for Emergencies, Raed Arafat, said.
The number of new cases is dropping, and if we stay on this trend, we could be
restriction free by Easter, Arafat said. In turn, the head of the immunization programme,
Valeriu Gheorghita, said that in the future vaccination against Covid-19 will
be seasonal, just like the flu vaccine, and adjusted to the strain in
circulation at a particular moment. The vaccination rate among adults stands at
50.5% in Romania at present, Valeriu Gheorghita said.
MOLDOVA A number of bilateral documents were signed in Chisinau on
Friday after a joint meeting of the Romanian and Moldovan governments,
including an inter-government agreement under which Romania is to provide EUR
100 million worth of non-reimbursable aid. The Romanian PM Nicolae Ciucă and
his Moldovan counterpart Natalia Gavriliţa also signed a joint statement on
strengthening cooperation in economy and investments. Other agreements concern
the building, maintenance, repair and use of a cross-border bridge in Ungheni,
and roaming and international call tariffs, cooperation in energy security,
digitisation, research and innovation and defence, justice and home affairs. The
Romanian PM emphasised that this is the most substantial openness ever seen in
bilateral relations, and promised that Romania will remain a determined and
vocal supporter of the Republic of Moldova’s EU accession efforts. In turn,
Moldova’s PM Natalia Gavriliţa
said her Cabinet has undertaken to provide a predictable and attractive
environment for investments in the country, in line with European best
practices.Nicolae Ciucă was received by the president of Moldova, Maia Sandu, to
whom he conveyed Romania’s full support for the reforms she initiated in the
judicial field in particular.
TENNIS The Romanian tennis player Irina Begu (56 WTA) Friday defeated
Tereza Martincova (42 WTA) of the Czech Republic, 6-4, 6-2, and qualified into
the semis of the Sankt Petersburg tournament. Martincova had won (6-7, 6-4,
6-4) her only previous match against Begu, in Tashkent in 2019. (A.M.P.)
