Radio România Internațional

Tag: King Mihai 1st

  • December 13, 2017 UPDATE

    December 13, 2017 UPDATE

    KING The coffin with the dead body of Romania’s former sovereign Mihai the 1st arrived in Romania on Wednesday and was further taken to the Peles Castle in Sinaia, southern Romania where officials from Bucharest and from the ex-soviet Romanian-speaking Republic of Moldova presented their condolences. Romanian president Klaus Iohannis, the country’s Prime Minister Mihai Tudose and the speaker of Parliament in the Republic of Moldova Adrian Candu have also signed in the book of condolences. People’s access to the Castle was restricted but many took to the streets to see the funeral procession and bid farewell to Romania’s last king who ruled their country between 1940 and 1947. The king is presently lying in state at the Royal Castle in Bucharest where everybody who wants to pay their respects is expected. King Mihai died in Switzerland at 96 on December 5th and is to be buried in Curtea de Arges, southern Romania, where all the Romanian kings have been interred.




    LAW The government of the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet Romanian-speaking state, has endorsed a draft law on changing in the Constitution the name of the country’s official language from Moldovan into Romanian. Under the law, the syntagm ‘the Moldovan language using a Latin alphabet’ has been replaced by ‘the Romanian Language”. The country’s pro-Russia president Igor Dodon has described the decision to change the name of the official language as unacceptable. He has voiced conviction that the amendment will not get Parliament approval.




    SURVEY Roughly 16 thousand Romanian doctors have left the country to work abroad, particularly in EU countries, shows a survey published by the Coalition for the Rights of Migrants and Refugees, a group formed by several Romanian NGOs. According to the survey, Romania is in need of 600 GPs and 4,000 qualified doctors. On the other hand the number of employees in the research & development sector has dropped by 30% in the past 20 years. The survey has been conducted on the migration of highly qualified professionals in three areas: medicine, research & development and IT.




    BUDGET BILL The 2018 state and social security bills were being debated on in the joint budget and finance committees of Romania’s Parliament, with the final vote scheduled for December 21. The budget for 2018 was based on a 5.5% economic growth rate, a 3.1% inflation rate, an average exchange rate of 4.55 lei for the Euro and an increase in the average number of employees by 4.2%. Healthcare, education and investments are the priorities of the government in Bucharest if we look at the amount of funds these areas have been allocated in the 2018 budget bill. The budget bill is contested by the Opposition that has filed almost 4 thousand amendments to it.


  • May 5, 2016

    May 5, 2016

    May 6th will be seeing the beginning of an election campaign for the local election on June 5th in Romania. This campaign is due to end on June 4th. Several well-known political parties, such as the Social Democratic Party, the National-Liberal Party, the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, the Alliance of the Liberals and Democrats in Romania, the National Union for the Progress of Romania and the People’s Movement Party as well as a few newly founded political groups are vying for seats in the upcoming election. Under the 2015 legislation, a party must have at least 3 members to be registered. This has been for the third time since the fall of communism in Romania when a technocratic government is staging elections, after the ones headed by Theodor Stolojan over 1991-1992 and Mugur Isarescu over 1999-2000.



    Several events devoted to Romania’s Royal House, which is celebrating 150 years on May 10th, are to be staged in Bucharest and Sinaia, a mountain resort in southern Romania, until next Tuesday. A school entitled “Queen-mother Elena” is to be inaugurated in Bucharest today, while a cinema in Bucharest will be screening a documentary entitled, ‘King Mihai’s War in His own Words’. On Friday, the Coral Temple in Bucharest is to be hosting a ceremony staged by the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania. Radio Romania will tomorrow be playing venue for two events: the launch of a volume entitled ‘The Royal Year’ and a Royal Concert. Princess Margareta and Prince Radu together with other members of the Royal Family will on Monday attend a session in the Aula Magna of the Romanian Academy while on the next day the resort of Sinaia, in southern Romania, will be seeing a royal standard ceremony for the first time since 1947. Health issues have prevented Romania’s king, Mihai 1st from attending the ceremonies, but he will be represented by his daughter Princess Margareta.



    The 20th edition of the European Film Festival has today started in Bucharest and other five Romanian cities. The event has been staged by the Romanian Cultural Institute in partnership with the European Commission’s Representation in Romania with support from the Filmmakers Union in Romania the National Film Archive, Elvire Popesco Cinema and the embassies and cultural centres of the European countries under the EUNIC aegis in Bucharest. The present edition of this festival will see the screening of 85 films from almost all European countries. Over May 5th and 15th the Romanian Cultural will be hosting an exhibition of artist Silviu Ghetie, showcasing photos taken during the making of Romanian film productions.



    Four Romanians have qualified for the quarterfinals of the tennis tournament in Madrid with 4.8 million dollars in prize money. Two of these players, Simona Halep and Irina Begu will by vying for a place in the semi-finals. Patricia Tig, from the Romanian delegation, last night managed a sensational win against 25th-seeded Madison Keys of the USA. In the quarters Tig will be playing Australian Samantha Stosur, while Sorana Carstea will be up against Dominika Cibulkova of Slovakia.