Radio România Internațional

Tag: handball championship

  • December 11, 2017 UPDATE

    December 11, 2017 UPDATE

    KING MICHAEL I — The Parliament of Romania convened in a solemn session on Monday, in the presence of President Klaus Iohannis, to pay tribute to King Michael I. The head of state said in his address that King Michael I symbolised the hope of a reborn and free country, and that His Majesty would forever be remembered as a great leader. The Royal House will continue to deploy all efforts, alongside the state institutions, for the country to advance within the EU and NATO, Princess Margareta, Custodian of the Crown, also said. Attending the Parliament’s solemn session were former presidents Emil Constantinescu and Traian Basescu, Prime Minister Mihai Tudose, the speakers of the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu and Liviu Dragnea and Patriarch Daniel of the Romanian Orthodox Church. King Michael I died on December 5, at 96 years of age, in Switzerland. Ever since, Romanians have been bringing flowers and candles at the Romanian and Swiss residences of the Royal House. The King’s body will be brought to the country on December 13. The authorities have declared a national mourning on December 14, 15 and 16. King Michael I, the last of Romania’s 4 sovereigns, will be buried on Saturday, December 16, in Curtea de Arges, in the south of the country, where all Romanian royalty are interred. Many Romanian and foreign personalities are expected to attend the funerals. Historians agree that by having the pro-German Marshall Ion Antonescu arrested and having the country join the Allies, Michael I helped shorten WW2 by six months. Forced by the Communists to abdicate in 1947, the ex-King was only allowed to return to Romania after the fall of communism. He was one of the strongest supporters on Romania’s joining NATO and the EU.




    CORRUPTION – The Group of States against Corruption (GRECO), the Council of Europe’s anti-corruption body, convened in plenary sitting, has decided to make an urgent assessment of the draft laws in the Romanian justice system. According to the Council of Europe’s communiqué on Monday, various institutions and public persons from Romania and from abroad have voiced serious concerns at the fact that these projects might endanger the effectiveness of the battle against corruption and might undermine the independence of the judiciary. This is the first time when GRECO uses this newly introduced regulation. It can be applied when an institutional reform, a legal initiative or a procedural revision can lead to a serious violation, by a member state, of the Council’s anti-corruption standards. Thousands of people took to the streets once again on Sunday night in Bucharest and other major cities, to protest the changes to the justice laws promoted by the ruling coalition made up of the Social Democratic Party and the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats. The protesters say the Power is attempting to have the judiciary subordinated to political circles and to stop the fight against corruption.




    LAWS — The Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest endorsed on Monday the changes to the status of magistrates proposed by the special parliamentary committee for the justice laws. In keeping with the new provisions, prosecutors become part of a hierarchy topped by the justice minister. Also, the head of state may no longer challenge judge and prosecutor appointments but can still hold his current responsibilities with regard to appointing the prosecutor general and the heads of the National Anti-Corruption Directorate and of the Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism. The bill will be submitted to the Senate, the decision making body in this case.




    BUDGET — The Parliament of Romania begins the debates on the 2018 state budget bill this week. The public budget is based on a 5.5% economic growth rate and earmarks higher funds for healthcare, education, agriculture and investments. The state budget and social security budget bills were distributed on Thursday to the MPs, who had until this morning to submit amendments. The proposals will be discussed by Parliament’s specialised committees starting on Tuesday and will be finalised on Saturday. Debates on the amended texts will begin next Monday in Parliament, with the final vote scheduled on December 21.




    STATISTICS — Romania’s trade deficit in the first 10 months of the year was 10.2 billion euros, nearly 2.3 billion euros more than in the corresponding period of 2016, the National Statistics Institute announced. According to the institution, in October, Romania’s exports exceeded 5.7 billion euro, while imports reached 7 billion euros. As compared to October 2016, exports were 13.3% higher, and imports rose by 16.7%. The intra-EU trade accounted for 75.9% of Romania’s total imports and exports in the first 10 months of the year.




    ISRAEL — While on a visit to Brussels on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and said he expected European countries to follow suit. Ahead of a meeting with EU foreign ministers, Netanyahu pointed out that Trump’s decision, condemned by Palestinians and by the European governments, would make Middle East peace possible. He called on Palestinians to recognise Israel as a Jewish state and Jerusalem as its capital. Netanyahu had a meeting on Monday with the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who welcomed the first visit by an Isaraeli PM to the EU in 22 years. She emphasised that the bloc would respect the “international consensus” on the status of Jerusalem and reiterated the Union’s commitment to a two-state solution. The UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, says Trump’s recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel threatens to compromise the Israel-Palestinian peace efforts. Street protests against the decision continued in Muslim countries, while the Arab League has called on the US Administration to reverse it, on grounds that it will escalate tensions in the region.




    HANDBALL — Romania’s women’s handball team was defeated by the Czech Republic on Monday, 27-28 in the round of 16 of the World Championships in Germany. Romania had won four matches in group A against Paraguay, Slovenia, Spain and Angola and had lost the match against France. Romania won the bronze medal in the previous championship, held in 2015, and is the only team to have taken part in all the 22 world final tournaments in the history of the competition.


    (Translated by Elena Enache)


  • November 7 2016, UPDATE

    November 7 2016, UPDATE


    VISIT NATO appreciates Romanias contribution to its missions and activities said on Monday the NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, on the first day of her visit to Bucharest. During the meeting she had with the Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu she also talked about the anti-missile system in Deveselu and the fact that Romania had activated a multi-national division with the NATO Multinational Division Southeast, aimed at supporting defense and security in this part of Europe. On Tuesday, Mrs. Gottemoeller will meet with high-ranking officials from 9 allied states in Central and Eastern Europe, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, who will be attending a regional meeting. Mrs. Gottemoeller is the first woman to hold the position of NATO Deputy Secretary General. Previously she held the office of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security for the U.S. Department of State.



    EU POLICY The European Commissioner for Regional Policy, the Romanian Corina Cretu, is paying a two day visit to Sweden as of Monday. The Brussels official will talk with ministers and representatives of the national and regional authorities about implementing the cohesion policy in Sweden. Corina Cretu will visit EU funded projects in the city of Vasetras. On Tuesday, Corina Cretu will open in Stockholm the proceedings of the 7th forum on the EU macro-regional strategy for the Baltic Sea region. 1000 participants will attend the event, which will focus on the future of the region and the main objectives of the Strategy for the year 2030.



    CORRUPTION The former head of the National Fiscal Administration Agency (ANAF) Sorin Blejnar was detained on Monday by anti-corruption prosecutors in Ploiesti, southern Romania, for influence peddling. According to the National Anticorruption Directorate, in 2011 Blejnar accepted from a businessman the promise to get 20% of the value of IT contracts concluded with ANAF. The former head of the Agency is accused that, together with other employees of the institution, allegedly got some 3 million Euros in bribe. On Tuesday, Blejnar will appear before the magistrates who will rule on his 30 day preventive detention.



    PAY RISE On Monday, the Romanian Chamber of Deputies adopted 15% pay rises and bonuses for the employees in the health-care and education sectors, as of December 1st 2016 and January 1st 2017 respectively. The Liberals, who had criticized the bill before, saying its just electoral bait, refused to participate in the voting. The measures were adopted although the Government had warned that the impact on the budget would stand at some 4.8 billion lei. Also on Monday, the Senate tacitly endorsed a bill on increasing the pension calculation index. Another bill tacitly endorsed by the Senate raises to 500 lei the pensions of the former members of the cooperative associations in agriculture. The bills will be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making forum in this matter.



    CAR CRASH 24 people wounded in Saturdays pileup on the fog-bound highway linking Bucharest to Constanta (in the southeast) are still in hospital. One of the injured is in a critical condition. Investigators are trying to establish who caused the multi-vehicle accident that killed 4 people. Prosecutors have opened a criminal case file for manslaughter and bodily injury and started the technical verification of the 29 cars involved in the multi-car crash. Several drivers had their licenses suspended for careless driving and failure to maintain safe distance between cars, since fog was very dense on the highway.



    AWARD Kasper Holten, the Director of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, was decorated by the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis with the National Order Faithful Service in Rank of Commander. According to a communiqué by the Presidential Administration, the order was granted in recognition for the constant support to Romanian art, the remarkable contribution to promoting Enescu in the world and for promoting Romanias and Romanian cultures image and interests in Great Britain.



    BULGARIAN ELECTION In Bulgaria, the candidate of the Socialist opposition, Major General of the Reserve, Rumen Radev, and that of the GERB center-right party, Ţeţka Ţaceva, have obtained most of the votes in Sundays presidential election. They will face each other in a second round of voting scheduled for November 13. The former Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force is ranked 1st, at a small distance from his challenger Ţeţka Ţaceva who is supported by the current power in Sofia and who obtained 22.5% of the votes. The Bulgarian PM Boiko Borisov said his party obtained best results, this landslide victory being due to their coalition with other parties. He announced he would resign if General Radev won the presidential election.



    US ELECTION On Tuesday Americans will vote for their president choosing between the Democrat Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president Bill Clinton, and the Republican billionaire Donald Trump. Polls show a 3-4% advantage for the Democrat candidate, a percentage which is within the limits of the margin of error. If Hillary Clinton wins the election she will carry on the projects started by Barack Obama, namely involvement in the international coalition against terrorism and strengthening of NATOs eastern flank in order to discourage Russia. Analysts say Donald Trumps victory would critically change the situation, in the sense that the US will be more open towards Moscow and will no longer receive refugees from Syria.



    HANDBALL – Romanias mens handball team on Sunday defeated the Polish team 28-23 in Cluj-Napoca (northwest). This is one of the teams most resounding victories of the past years against Poland, bronze medallist at last years World Handball Championship. The match counted for Group 2 of the preliminaries of the 2018 European Mens Handball Championship. Trained by Xavier Pascual, who also trains the famous FC Barcelona, the Romanian handballers also won the away match against Belarus last week. Romania is the group leader with 4 points, being followed by Belarus with 2 points, Serbia 2 points and Poland 0 points. The next match of the Romanian mens handball team will be against Serbia on home ground. The match is scheduled for May 2017. Romania has not managed to qualify to the final of a European Championship since 1996, the latest final tournament in which they participated being that of the 2011 World Champion.




  • January 14, 2016 UPDATE

    January 14, 2016 UPDATE

    The Romanian Foreign Minister, Lazar Comanescu, is participating, on Thursday and Friday, in Lithuania, in the Snow Meeting 2016 informal meeting on issues of foreign policy and security, at the invitation of his Lithuanian counterpart Linas Linkevicius. The meeting gathers decision makers in the foreign policy and security fields from the NATO and EU members, high-ranking officials of the two bodies as well as academic personalities. The security developments in NATO’s eastern and southern vicinity as well as the Alliance’s response to these developments dominate the agenda of the Snow Meeting 2016. On the sidelines of the meeting, the Romanian foreign minister talked with his Lithuanian counterpart about issues related to bilateral cooperation, topical issues on the European and regional agenda as well as aspects of cooperation within NATO. Also on Thursday the Romanian Foreign Minister met with Victoria Nuland, the US Assistance Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. During the talks they discussed the situation in the region showing concern for the situation in the Republic of Moldova.



    Romanians celebrate, on Friday, January 15, 166 years since the birth of their national poet Mihai Eminescu (1850-1889), who is considered the last great representative of European Romanticism. On the occasion they will also mark the National Culture Day, instated by Parliament in 2010, upon the proposal of the Romanian Academy. Like every year, the diplomatic and consular missions, as well as the Romanian Cultural Institutes abroad organize special events devoted to this day. Eminescu’s birthday will be also officially marked in the Republic of Moldova as well as by the Romanian communities aboard.



    Romania’s men’s handball team, on Thursday defeated the Austrian side on home ground, 32-29, but failed to qualify to the playoffs of the 2017 World Championship. In the match that took place in Baia Mare (in the north), Romania had to overcome Austria by 4 points, after, in the previous match, Austria defeated the Romanian team 27-24. In another development, Romania’s water polo team will take on Germany, on Friday, in the last match in Group C of the European Championship, held in Serbia. In the first match, Romania overcame Georgia, 12-6, but was defeated by Italy, 11-5 in the group’s 2nd match.



    The secretary of state with the Romanian Foreign Ministry, Radu Podgorean, on Thursday received the new ambassador of the Republic of Moldova to Bucharest, Mihai Gribincea. According to a Foreign Ministry communiqué, Radu Podgorean underlined that, in the current context of the eastern neighborhood, it is important for Chisinau to form a government as soon as possible to ensure the country’s stability and to firmly apply the reform measures necessary to boost Moldova’s European aspirations. The Romanian official underscored that such evolutions would make the country score progress in running the important cooperation and assistance projects initiated by Romania to support the Republic of Moldova.



    The French carmaker Renault on Thursday confirmed that tests were conducted last week and said investigators wanted to check equipment at its factories. However, Renault stressed that tests showed “no evidence” of devices designed to cheat emissions tests, France Press reports. Shares in Renault plunged 20% at the Paris Stock Exchange after police raids on the company’s facilities. The problems faced by Renault also affected its rival Peugeot Citroen, whose shares dropped 7%. Raids at Renault come after last year the German carmaker Volkswagen admitted its diesel-engine cars had been fitted with computer software designed to flatter emissions data during tests. We recall that Renault took over the Romanian carmaker Dacia in 1999.


    (News translated by Lacramioara Simion)