23 June, 2015
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 23.06.2015, 12:01
The Romanian Parliament is to vote today on the National Defence Strategy for the 2015 — 2019 period. On Monday president Klaus Iohannis presented the strategy in plenary session. According to the head of state, among other things, the strategy aims to protect the fundamental rights and freedoms of all citizens and to guarantee their safety. The new strategy is based on the concept of ‘extended strategy’ and covers areas such as the economy, education, healthcare and the environment. The document also reaffirms Romania’s strategic partnership with the US and its NATO and EU membership as main pillars of its foreign and security policy.
Starting today, until Thursday, the Romanian Defence Minister Mircea Dusa is attending the NATO foreign ministers’ summit in Brussels. They will discuss the latest developments with regard to the security environment, the stage of the action plan for increasing NATO’s response capability and the preparations for the NATO summit due in Warsaw next year. Also, the NATO defence ministers are to make a decision regarding NATO’s rapid reaction force. On Monday, the secretary general of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg announced an increase in this force of up to 40 thousand-strong. The crisis in Ukraine and Moscow’s intervention on the separatists’ side have proven that this force needs to be consolidated, Stoltenberg also said.
On Wednesday, the new Fiscal Code bill is to be voted upon in plenary session of the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making forum in this matter. The Chamber’s budget and finance committee has already unanimously endorsed the bill. One of the main measures included in the new code provides for the reduction of the VAT from 24 to 19%, starting January 1st, 2016. The tax on special constructions, the excise on fuels and the 16% tax on dividends will be eliminated, also as of January 1st, 2016.
The Eurozone finance ministers will gather again tomorrow, in a bid to reach an agreement on the Greek crisis, the president of the European Council Donald Tusk has announced, quoted by France Presse. The announcement was made at the end of the Eurozone summit held yesterday, focusing on the Greek government’s new offer for economic restructuring, and aimed at unblocking the external financial aid. The finance ministers will analyse Athens’s new proposals and will inform the EU heads of state and government, who will gather in Brussels on Thursday and Friday. Thousands of people marched on Athens’s streets on Monday in favour of Greece’s remaining part of the Eurozone. Similar actions took place in other European capitals.
If the Greek government defaults on payment, the countries in the region might be affected by the crisis that would be triggered by the Greek banks which control a large part of their own banking sectors, Reuters reports. Officials from Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Romania and Serbia have announced they have quarantined the local branches of the Greek banks, to make sure they survive, even if their parent banks collapsed. However, if the Greek crisis generates panic among the population, who will rush into withdrawing their money from the institutions controlled by the Greek banks, the results will be unpredictable, Reuters also stresses. The Greek banks control approximately one fifth of the Bulgarian and Macedonian banking sectors and a little less those of Romania, Serbia and Albania. According to the Romanian Central Bank, the level of capitalization of the Greek banks in Romania is 17% higher than the minimum 10% threshold established by the regulatory authorities.
In the first quarter of this year, the rate of unemployment in Romania was 7.4%, 0.7% higher than in the previous quarter, reads a communiqué issued by the National Statistics Institute. The highest rate, 24.7%, was registered among the youth of up to 24 years of age. The employment rate for the 15-24 years age bracket was 23%. As regards the population aged 20 to 64, the employment rate was approximately 64% lower that the national target of 70% set as part of the Europa 2020 strategy.
15 hundred soldiers and 100 pieces of military equipment from Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Greece, the Republic of Moldova, Poland, the US and Turkey are participating in a ground – troop exercise of the special operation forces. The exercise is underway in the garrisons and airdromes in south-eastern Romania, including along the coast. Another two large-scale exercises, TRIDENT JOUST 15 and RESOLUTE CASTLE 15 are also underway in central Romania.
