Schengen – The Romanian Interior Minister, Cătălin Predoiu on Wednesday talked, during a video conference, with his Hungarian counterpart, Sandor Pinter, on the subject of Romania’s accession to the Schengen area with land borders. The Romanian official stated that a good opportunity was created for the meeting that will take place in Budapest on November 22, in which the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, will also participate. With this discussion, I concluded a set of three successive meetings with the Austrian minister, Gerhard Karner, the Bulgarian minister, Atanas Ilkov, and the Hungarian minister, Sandor Pinter, in which I intended to harmonize the positions, so that the Budapest meeting should result in a new step forward for Romania’s accession to Schengen with land borders, Catalin Predoiu added.
Commissions – The Romanian Parliament approved, with a large majority of votes, the setting up of two commissions of inquiry to investigate the expenses made by the Presidential Administration in the last 10 years and to ‘investigate the real estate mafia’. The first commission was initiated by the social-democratic groups in the governing coalition with the liberals. The members of the commission want to find out, among other things, the sums paid by the Presidential Administration for the rental of planes, for the internal and external travel of the president of the country or the expenses incurred for the development of the golf courses pertaining to protocol villas. The other commission of inquiry, initiated by the National Liberal Party starting from the Nordis case, aims to identify the ways in which homes in the project stage were sold to two or more people and to identify the mechanisms through which homes promised to bona fide buyers are later resold through fictitious companies. The mandate of the current parliament will end at the end of this year, so the two commissions only have time to investigate until the winter holidays.
Ukraine – The Romanian Embassy in Kyiv has taken additional measures to ensure the protection of its staff. The Romanian Foreign Ministry says that the activity was limited to emergency actions, in coordination with the diplomatic missions of the other allied and EU member states, considering the security developments in Ukraine. The situation is constantly monitored and, in consultation with the Ukrainian authorities, the measures will be adapted according to developments. Ukraine used, on Tuesday, for the first time, American ballistic missiles against a target on the territory of Russia, as a result of the permission received from the Biden administration, which is at the end of its mandate. A thousand days after the beginning of the Russian invasion, the European Parliament promises Ukraine that the EU will stand by it as long as necessary. The Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, stated that, without European aid, Ukraine would have fallen under Russian occupation.
Football – The Romanian national football team won the match with Kosovo 3-0 after the latter abandoned the match, the European Football Union announced on Wednesday. The Kosovo players abandoned Friday’s game in Bucharest, from the League of Nations, with only a few tens of seconds before the end, at the score 0-0. They motivated their decision by the fact that some spectators chanted “Serbia, Serbia”. Kosovo has declared its independence, but it is not recognized by Serbia or Romania. The team from Kosovo left the field for the same reasons in the match between the two teams in September 2023, in the EURO 2024 preliminaries, but later the Kosovo players returned to the pitch after about an hour and the match could end (2-0 for Romania). Following UEFA’s decision on Wednesday, Romania finished C2 with 18 points and promoted to League B. Kosovo ranked second with 12 points, Cyprus finished third with 6 points and Lithuania is on last position, without any point.
Training center – Two F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft of the Royal Dutch Forces, the last to equip the European F-16 Training Center, landed on Wednesday at the 86th Air Base in Feteşti (south-east), the Romanian Defense Ministry (MApN) announced. According to MApN, the aircraft join the 16 planes already in Romania to strengthen the training capacity of the Center, which currently has a total of 18 aircraft of this type. By establishing the European F-16 Training Center, Romania has committed to providing a high-quality training environment, with access to state-of-the-art technical resources and know-how, not only for Romanian pilots, but also for those from allied and partner states, including Ukraine. The F-16 Center contributes to the creation of common operational standards and to strengthening the capacity of the North Atlantic Alliance to face the complex challenges in the Black Sea region and in Eastern Europe. (LS)
