Category: Today in the News

Gathered in the first meeting this year, the political parties that make up the ruling coalition in Romania – PSD, PNL and UDMR – and the representatives of national minorities established the calendar for the new presidential elections. The decision comes after last year’s elections were annulled by the Constitutional Court due to external hybrid interference and the undeclared financing of the electoral campaign of one of the candidates. More specifically, the independent candidate Călin Georgescu, an extremist sovereigntist and admirer of Vladimir Putin, who took everybody by surprise managing to gather the largest number of votes in the first round of the elections that were later cancelled.

The coalition has agreed that the first round of the presidential elections will take place on May 4, and the second round on May 18. The decision is to be formalized next week through normative acts adopted by the executive – a draft emergency ordinance and the draft decision. When setting the dates, it was taken into account that the elections do not overlap with the Easter and Palm Sunday holidays, states a press release. The release also reads that the first round will take place at the same time as the partial elections in certain counties: elections for mayors in 13 communes, two cities and also for a County Council. The governing coalition has also reconfirmed that the former president of the PNL Crin Antonescu remains its candidate for the supreme position in the state.

Announced, on December 23, as the sole representative of the coalition in the race for Cotroceni, a few days ago Crin Antonescu had suspended himself from the agreement, citing the lack of a concrete date for the presidential elections, as well as the lack of support from the political forces that had proposed him. Wednesday was also the day when the Bucharest Court of Appeal published the reasons for the decision by which, on December 31, the legal action against the Central Electoral Bureau regarding the annulment of the presidential elections was rejected.

The right to vote and the right to be elected were violated through the exercise of an abuse of power – Călin Georgescu and the Coalition for the Defense of the Rule of Law claimed in their lawsuit. Călin Georgescu also claimed that the right of the Romanian people to exercise national sovereignty through its representative bodies, established through free and fair elections, was not respected, nor the right of the citizens of Romania to live in a democratic and legal state. The decisions of the Constitutional Court of Romania are final and binding, therefore they cannot be challenged in court – writes the Bucharest Court of Appeal in its justification, also noting that by canceling these elections, the civil and fundamental rights of the citizens provided for in the Constitution were not violated. (MI)

The number of deaths in road accidents decreased slightly in 2023, compared to 2022. However, Romania continues to account for many victims on the roads. According to data from the Road Safety Bulletin drawn up by the Romanian Police, 1,500 people lost their lives in 2023, most of them pedestrians. Also, approximately 3,500 people were seriously injured. Most of the approximately 4,500 serious road accidents occurred in rural areas. In more than half of the cases, the fault was the drivers’, the most frequent causes of serious road accidents being the failure to adapt the speed to the road conditions, but also the cyclists’ violations of road safety rules.

In other words, the irregular movement of pedestrians and the excessive speed of motorists are the two most frequent causes of serious road accidents in Romania. In order to reduce their number, the Traffic Police has already started to monitor traffic through a new surveillance system – ʺe-SIGURʺ (e-SAFE). For now, the system has been rendered operational only on the A1 Bucharest-Pitesti and A2 Bucharest-Constanța highways, as well as on DN2 – E85, in Vrancea county (east), and it uses gun-type radar devices, with video camera, mounted on a tripod, visible on roadsides. The recordings are analyzed by the police, and if a violation of the traffic law is found, then the driver will receive the fine at home, by mail, so there’s no need to stop them in traffic.

And a piece of warning: the increase in the gross minimum wage at national level also determined the increase in the fine point, so that fines start from 405 lei (about 80 euros) but can reach over 20,000 lei (the equivalent of about 4 thousand euros)! Another important thing to know is that, by law, the application of sanctions is done gradually, so, based on the checks made in the database, a driver who has not been sanctioned before can only receive a warning, while another can be sanctioned harsher.

The operation of the ʺe-SIGURʺ system will not be limited to the two highways and one national road mentioned above. The police announced that more fixed radars will be gradually set up on dozens of roads in high risk areas throughout the country. According to the law establishing ʺe-SIGURʺ, the goal for 2030 is to reduce by 50% the number of people dying in road accidents, as compared to 2019, and also by 50% the number of people seriously injured in road accidents. (MI)

In the last meeting of this year, the Bucharest Government adopted an emergency ordinance on the basis of which the state budget for 2025 will be drawn up. Strongly contested, the document aims to stop state spending and reduce budget waste by one percent of the Gross Domestic Product, which means approximately 19 billion lei. Another goal is to increase budget revenues through the application of the structural reforms provided for in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNNR). Social-democratic Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has stated that Romania got from the European Commission an extension of four to seven years for reducing the budget deficit, and the first step is to reduce it to 7% in 2025.

The new year is going to be difficult from an economic point of view, Ciolacu stressed, and, in this context, measures are needed to protect Romania “from potentially major financial risks”. Among the measures foreseen are the freezing of pensions and salaries in the public sector, as well as state allowances for children. The document also provides for the reduction of the subsidy allocated to political parties by 25% compared to the level granted this year. On the other hand, employment in the public sector will be frozen, and some public agencies will be closed or merged in 2025. At the same time, holiday vouchers will be granted with a co-payment from the employee of 800 lei. The Minister of Finance, Tánczos Barna, has stated that the ordinance also establishes that people working in construction, agriculture and IT must pay tax on their salary.

The document adopted by the Government increases the tax on dividends from 8 to 10 percent and introduces a new tax on special constructions. This tax will not be collected in the next 90 days, during which the application rules will be drawn up, and the Minister of Finance will have consultations with the big companies that will make investments in Romania in relation to this tax. Several union and employers’ organizations expressed their dissatisfaction with the fiscal-budgetary measures adopted by the Executive. Unions from education, public administration and social assistance, as well as the Energy Employers’ Federation criticized the lack of social dialogue and the haste with which the ordinance was promoted.

The unions in education oppose the freezing of salaries, while the employers in the food industry disapprove of the cancellation of fiscal incentives for employees in the field, and the representatives of SMEs are contesting the reduction of the taxation threshold and the increase in the tax on dividends. For their part, students are dissatisfied with the limitation of discounts on railway transport. Police officers in penitentiaries took to the streets to express their disapproval of the provisions of the ordinance. They say that, by applying the new provisions, they will lose up to 30% of their salary. (MI)

35 years have passed since Timişoara became the first city free from communism in Romania, a moment that triggered a wave of protests which would spread to Bucharest and other cities of the country and lead to the fall of the Ceauşescu regime on December 22, 1989. This year, just like the years before, sirens were sounded in the city to mark the moment, and several revolutionaries remembered the day of the 20 December 1989, when over 100,000 people gathered in the centre of Timisoara. It was a day of mourning at the Metropolitan Cathedral, where a service was held in memory of the heroes of the Revolution. Wreaths were laid in front of the Cathedral, and other memorial services were held at the churches in the city and at the Heroes’ Cemetery.

Three and a half decades after the historic moment, the events in Timisoara were marked by the turmoil on the current political scene, and the Timisoara revolutionaries say that these are the result of the fact that Romanian society has not been able fulfill all the ideals of December ’89. The whole country has marked the Romanian Revolution these days, and many of those attending the commemoration events have recalled how the protesters then fought for democracy and a European path for Romania. In December 1989, 1,142 people lost their lives, over 3,000 were seriously injured and several hundred people were illegally detained and tortured.

In a message conveyed on the day of the Victory Day of the Romanian Revolution, President Klaus Iohannis states that Romania is at a delicate point and must firmly reject attempts to revise history, which seek to “defile the memory of the heroes of democratic Romania and mystify the truth about the dictatorial regime’. “The Revolution of December 1989 was lived with fear, with a lot of emotion, but above all with hope and courage, as it was the moment when Romania was reborn and showed the whole world that it could create its own destiny,” the head of state said. He also pointed out that the ideal of freedom for which the heroes of the Revolution sacrificed themselves is now ‘more alive and more present than ever’. “Let us never forget how much we have achieved since then and how many efforts have been mane to have a country deeply attached to democratic values, which is considered a reliable partner of the allies in the European Union and NATO”, Klaus Iohannis pointed out. He warned, however, that the values and principles of the 1989 Revolution risk being endangered today by ‘populist and hypocritical discourses’.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has also sent a message on the 35th anniversary of the Romanian Revolution, emphasising the sacrifice of the people who fought for democracy. The EC leader stressed that Romania and Europe remember the Romanians’ sacrifice. “35 years ago, Romanians stood up for the right to choose their own destiny. Many gave their lives so that their children could be free and live in democracy. Today, Romania and Europe remember their sacrifice, wrote the President of the European Commission. (MI)

The EU heads of state and government gathered in Brussels to discuss the war in Ukraine, migration, the situation in the Middle East, the Republic of Moldova and Georgia, the EU’s response to crises and Russia’s interference in the Romanian elections. Invited to the winter European Summit, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that what his country needed the most was for both the European Union and the United States of America to keep supporting Kyiv. Zelenskiy added that he wanted Donald Trump, back to the White House as of January 20, 2025, to be on Ukraine’s side in the war against Russian invasion and stressed that Ukraine would need security guarantees from the EU and the US in order for long-term peace to be ensured.

Trump’s return as head of the United States is a matter of concern for the European states, which expect his sovereignist policy to affect commercial relations again, as happened in his previous mandate. There is fear that the new American administration could increase import tariffs for European products by up to 20%. In this context, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Kaya Callas, has stated that the two blocs should avoid a trade war at all costs because both economies would be affected. There is no winner in a trade war, she said, and if we were to face such a scenario, China would be the one that would have the most fun.

Another widely debated topic was that of Russia’s interference in elections. Present at the summit, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis stated that Moscow’s behaviour is not only a threat to Romania, but to all democracies. He called on all the EU states to work together, including at the level of information exchanges, so that such interferences can be quickly detected and countered. Regarding this topic, the Prime Minister of Poland, Donald Tusk, said that all European leaders, including the skeptics, were now aware of the aggressiveness used by Russia to destabilize the democratic systems of the EU states and gave as an example Russia’s interference in Georgia, the Republic of Moldova and Romania.

Last but not least, the European leaders discussed the developments in Syria, after the ousting of Bashar al-Assad. The European states stressed that they had established diplomatic contacts with the new leadership, but that they were waiting for facts from the new government in Damascus in order to continue their financial and humanitarian support. The EU is interested in the situation stabilizing in order to be able to repatriate some of the Syrian refugee migrants to Europe, given that their presence has exacerbated social tensions and led to the growth of the extreme right in political terms. (MI)

Fitch Ratings has revised Romania’s outlook to negative, citing political instability and budget deficit.

Fitch Ratings has revised the Outlook on Romania’s Long-Term Foreign-Currency Issuer Default Rating (IDR) to “negative” from “stable”. The rating is, however, maintained at the previous level of BBB-. The agency cites, as an essential element of the downgrading, the sustained increase in the country’s public debt. At the same time, Romania’s large budget deficit is also an issue, which the Agency estimates at 8.2% of GDP this year. According to the Agency’s  baseline scenario, the general government debt to GDP ratio will increase from 49% in 2023 to 62% in 2026 and will continue to increase sharply to around 70% of GDP by 2028.  The assessment was made two months ahead of schedule and reflects the major risks Romania faces due to political instability, fiscal imbalances and rising public debt.

Economic analyst Aurelian Dochia says that the negative outlook is not a surprise and that the main reason for it  is  the very high level of the budget deficit. Aurelian Dochia: “The trend for 2025 is not encouraging at all. The deficit cannot be easily corrected in 2025, given that the economy is clearly suffering a slowdown in activity. Economic growth for 2025 will be quite small and deficit reduction measures on the spending side are very difficult to accept, both socially and politically.”

Fitch’s report could lead to an increase in Romania’s borrowing costs, which are currently the highest in the EU. Romania faces turbulence due to political instability and the cancellation of the presidential elections but the coalition government will take fiscal-budgetary consolidation measures to return to a stable outlook, political leaders in Bucharest say.

Finance Minister Marcel Boloş has explained that new measures will be found in the upcoming ordinance, to be made public in the coming days. Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, the leader of the PSD, has explained that the uncertainties regarding Romania will disappear with the formation, by the end of the year, of a pro-European majority and a Government that will draw up a structural budgetary plan assumed at European level. He added that Romania has the capacity to mobilize resources to return to a stable outlook. The budget deficit must be significantly reduced, says the leader of the UDMR (in the opposition), Kelemen Hunor, but at the moment it is not clear how more money could be collected to the budget, without increasing taxes and duties. The USR, in the opposition, advocates for reducing public spending, the party’s spokeswoman, Cristina Prună, pointing out that the revision of Romania’s outlook to “negative” is due to fiscal deterioration and the huge budget deficit. In turn, the first vice-president of AUR (in the opposition), Marius Lulea, accuses the current government of pushing the country into an apocalypse that will extend into next year, as the ruling parties do not take measures to reduce the deficit and continue to take out foreign loans at very high interest rates.