4 August, 2018

A round-up of the main stories in Romania today.

Newsroom, 04.08.2018, 13:20

Politics. The National Council of
the Liberal Party in opposition met on Saturday in Bucharest, with the
president of the country Klaus Iohannis in attendance. The latter held a speech
in which he attacked the ruling Social Democratic Party. He said the general
situation in Romania is very bad and that normality must be reinstated. All
opinion polls published in recent months show that 80% of Romanians believe the
country is heading in the wrong direction, president Iohannis also said. He
accused the Social Democrats’ leader Liviu Dragnea and his entourage of using
the public office to advance their own agenda and escape justice. He also
called on the Liberal Party to stay united and strong, saying a rational
alternative is needed. The president’s attending the Liberals’ meeting comes
amid conflicts within the party which the president tried to reconcile this
week, when the invited the party leadership for talks. The Liberals’ meeting
also features a presentation of the activity report of the party’s executive
bureau and the criteria, the procedure and the calendar for the nomination of
the party’s candidates to the European Parliament elections. A document called
The Principles of Liberal Good Governance is also to be debated and adopted.

Heatwave. Three
people have died in Spain because of a heatwave that continues to affect
western Europe, from north to south. The Romanian foreign ministry says the
authorities from Spain, Portugal and Croatia have issued red and yellow code
alerts for heat. In some regions in Greece and Portugal there is a high risk of
fire. A reading of 45 degrees Celsius was recorded in Alvega, a Portuguese city
located 150 km from the capital Lisbon. Scorching heat is also reported in
Spain, with 40 degrees Celsius in Madrid and 42 in Seville. Greece says there
is a high risk of fire on the islands in the north of the Aegean Sea, Central
Greece and the Attica peninsula. The most devastating fires in recent decades
caused the death of 88 people near Athens. A red code alert is in place in
Croatia in several regions in the south and a yellow code in the Zagreb region,
in the north-west. Very high temperatures have also been recorded in Austria,
Italy, France, Britain, Holland and Belgium. In Sweden, which had the hottest
July in the last 250 years, a glacier has melted. Meteorologists say new record
high temperatures may be recorded over the news few days in Europe. The current
record is 48 degrees Celsius in Greece in 1977.

Gas. Romania’s ambassador to the United
States George Maior had talks with the US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry about
gas exploitation in the Black Sea and exports to other countries via the BRUA
pipeline. Previously, Hungary unilaterally decided to shut down its section of
the pipeline and no longer to invest in interconnection with Austria as initially
planned. Maior and Perry also discussed other strategic projects in the Black
Sea. George Maior said Romania has the historical, geographic, economic and
strategic potential to become a regional energy hub. BRUA is considered to be a
project that could be used to transport gas from the Black Sea to Austria and
that could bring significant sums to Romania from both gas exploitation and
transport and transit fees. The national company Transgaz began building the Romanian
section of the pipeline two months ago.

Festival.
Untold, the biggest electronic music festival in Romania is under way in the
Transylvanian city of Cluj Napoca. The festival’s ten different stages feature
250 acts over the course of four days, until Sunday. The main stage is twice as
big as last year, measuring 80 metres in length and 31 metres in height. The
line-up includes acts such as The Chainsmokers, Armin van Buuren, Tiesto,
Tujamo and Afrojack. For the first time, the concerts are broadcast live on
YouTube. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected in Cluj for the festival,
including from abroad. More than 1,100 gendarme and police forces,
fire-fighters and medical staff are ensuring public order and safety. Dozens of
video surveillance cameras are in place.

Tennis. The Romanian tennis player Mihaela Buzarnescu, world no. 24,
today faces Belgium’s Elise Mertens, world no. 15, in the semifinals of the
WTA tournament in San Jose, California, worth almost 800,000 dollars in prize
money. Last time they met, in January, Mertens defeated Buzarnescu in the final
of the Hobart tournament. The Romanian player has won 36 matches this year.
This is her fifth singles semifinal after Hobart, Strasbourg, Prague and
Bucharest. Buzarnescu also plays the doubles semifinals in San Jose, where she
pairs up with Britain’s Heather Watson. The two will face the Ukrainian sisters
Lyudmilaand Nadiya Kichenok.