TALKS The National
Liberal Party, the USR PLUS Alliance and the Democratic Union of Ethnic
Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) are today having talks in an attempt to forge a
future centre-to-right government and share portfolios in the new legislature. This
round of talks proves to be difficult because the Liberals, who are currently
ruling the country and came second in the legislative election on December 6th,
aren’t willing to give up several ministries, such as finances, justice,
transports, development and EU funds, whereas the USR PLUS Alliance is claiming
some of these portfolios. UDMR would like to take over the healthcare, culture
and the environment, as it coordinated these ministries before and would also
like to take over other portfolios as well. The talks should be completed before
the consultations with president Klaus Iohannis on Monday for the designation
of a Prime Minister. These consultations will begin with the Social Democratic
Party, which mustered the largest number of votes in the latest election. The
Alliance for the Union of Romanians AUR, a party founded a year ago, got half
million votes and ranks fourth in Parliament. The Legislature will be completed
by the representatives of national minorities, other than the Hungarian one.
The PSD proposed Alexandru Rafila, Romania’s WHO representative for the
position of Prime Minister, whereas the Liberals have designated the incumbent
Finance Minister Florin Citu.
ALERT Authorities in Romania have
decided to extend the state of alert because of the Covid-19 pandemic for
another month, starting December 14th. The present restrictions will
remain in place including the nighttime curfew. Only one restriction has been
added; in order to avoid overcrowding ski-slopes, access to cable cars has been
restricted to only 10 people. Authorities have made a new appeal asking the
Romanians to limit visits, avoid going caroling and to New Year’s parties. Over
13,100 Covid-related fatalities have been registered in Romania since the
beginning of the pandemic. 6460 new infection cases have been reported in the
past 24 hours, mostly in Bucharest, where the rate of infections has exceeded 7
per one thousand people. 13 hundred people are in intensive care.
TENNIS Romanian tennis player Sorana
Cirstea is today up against Katerina Siniakova of the Czech Republic in the
finals of the ITF tournament in Dubai. Cirstea has so far won all the three
matches she played against Siniakova and if she wins today, the Romanian will
climb up to the 71st WTA position.
CLIMATE Romanian
president Klaus Iohannis has called into attention the fact that the climate
change effects are being felt in Romania more and more. Its summers have become
hotter and hotter while desertification and drought keep affecting crops and
limiting people access to food supplies. In a message conveyed on celebrating 5
years since the Paris Agreement on climate change, the head of the Romanian
state said it’s imperative that we make sure these effects will not deepen and
multiply to dramatically impact the citizens’ life and health. In this respect
at the European Council summit this week, we have agreed with EU leaders, to
bring down greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55% by 2030 as against the year
1990. President Iohannis said the authorities would implement in the following
years a series of projects allowing for the reduction of greenhouse gases at
the same time sustaining economic growth. The main goal of the Paris Agreement
is to limit global warming under 2°C and make efforts to keep it at 1.5°C by
the end of the century.
(bill)