ECONOMY Seven countries, including Romania, continue to
experience imbalances, the European Commission announced on Monday, having
assessed the existence of macroeconomic imbalances for the 12 Member States
selected for in-depth reviews in the 2022 Alert Mechanism Report. The
Commission points out that vulnerabilities in Romania’s economy relate to
external accounts, linked to large fiscal deficits, and to competitiveness
issues that are re-emerging. Large fiscal deficits pre-date the COVID-19 crisis
and have driven up the current account deficit, which poses risks to external
debt sustainability. Government debt increased significantly, although from
moderate levels, sovereign borrowing costs kept growing, while bureaucracy and
a volatile legislative framework will be a burden for investments, the
Commission warns.
RECOVERY The first payment request under the National Recovery and
Resilience Plan, amounting to EUR 3 bln, will be submitted to the European
Commission, PM Nicolae Ciucă announced on Monday. The money will finance
projects in all the sections of the Plan and will impact several strategic
sectors for Romania. PM Nicolae Ciuca appreciated the efforts of the
institutions involved in the management of the RRP and asked for a steady pace
in the efficient and high-quality implementation of the reforms and investment
projects. This is an effort that must be carried on and extended in order for
Romania to benefit from the EUR 30 bln available under the RRP for
modernisation and development projects, Ciucă said.
UKRAINE The number of people forced to flee conflict, violence, human
rights violations and persecutions has exceeded 100 million for the first time,
as a result of the war in Ukraine and other deadly conflicts, shows a statement
from the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). The figure is staggering,
worrying and should have never been reached, said UN High Commissioner for
Refugees Filippo Grandi. By the end of 2021, the number of displaced people had
reached 90 million worldwide, due to new waves of violence or protracted
conflicts in countries such as Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Myanmar, Nigeria,
Afghanistan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. On February 24, the Russian
President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of neighbouring Ukraine, throwing
further millions of people into the streets to flee fighting and reach less
exposed regions or other countries. Europe has not seen such a rapid inflow of
refugees since the end of World War II, UNHCR points out. Nearly 6.5 million
Ukrainians have left the country, mostly women and children, and the UN
estimates that their number could exceed 8 million by the end of the year.
CANNES The Romanian filmmaker Cristian Mungiu, competing at the Cannes Film
Festival, hopes that his film ‘R.M.N.’, in which a village in Transylvania is
like an explosive laboratory of populism, will open the eyes of Europeans to
this evil that has been gnawing at them, AFP reports. Mungiu is in the race for
a second Palme d’Or Prize, 15 years after his ‘4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days’.
The film title, ‘R.M.N.’, refers to the medical term MRI – magnetic resonance
imaging: Mungiu scans the underbelly of populism, an evil that has metastasized
in a still traditional village, on the borders of Europe, AFP reports. ‘I hope
that the public do not easily shy away from their responsibilities, do not
think that this is happening in a remote, wild land. I’m afraid that’s not the
case,’ said director Mungiu. The film takes place a few days before Christmas,
in a village in Transylvania, where the Roma population disappeared, driven
away by the inhabitants and the force of prejudice, and where the new ‘cursed
people of the Earth’ appeared: Sri Lankan workers, brought to work at the local
bakery after the Romanians went to work in the west. (AMP)