April 12, 2016 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 12.04.2016, 12:30

The International Monetary Fund has revised
up to 4.2% its forecast on Romania’s economic growth this year, from 3.9% it
estimated last October, an IMF report published on Tuesday shows. According to
the IMF forecasts, Ireland is the only country in Europe with a higher growth
than Romania this year. The IMF cautions though that this growth will go down
to 3.6% in 2017, but even so, Romania will have some of the highest growth
rates in Europe, equal to Ireland, Latvia and Poland.

Romanian
president Klaus Iohannis has held talks in Bucharest with representatives of
the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberals and the Democratic Union of
Ethnic Hungarians on legislation concerning national security. The head of
state wants a political consensus to be reached before subjecting the issue to
public debates. The first issue under discussion was a legislation package
including laws on anti-terrorism, pre-paid cards and cyber security. Issues
related to the national security law, the status of military personnel and the
laws regulating the good functioning of the Romanian Intelligence Service have
also been tackled. Leaders of the three parties stood for a balance between the
need for security and human rights observance. The need for amending the
security law has been highlighted recently by the Romanian president, who has
said the current legislation is no longer effective in the present security
context. The talks on amending the present security legislation are to continue
on Wednesday as well with representatives of the National Union for the
Progress of Romania, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats and the national
minorities.

The board
of the National Liberal Party, Romania’s main right-wing force, has nominated
Marian Munteanu as its candidate in the election race for Bucharest’s mayor,
Liberal co-president Alina Gorghiu has announced. A civil society
representative, Marian Munteanu is a symbol of the 90s, a students’ leader back
then and a symbol of the anti-communist movement. The previous candidate,
Ludovic Orban has withdrawn from the race after being probed in for using
influence in order to get undue benefits. Local elections are due on June 5th
in Romania.

The European Court of Human Rights has again
ruled against Romania and the country will have to pay 675 thousand euros in
damages after 45 people filed complains to the ECHR for the absence of an
inquiry into the bloody crackdown on the anti-communist demonstrations in
December 1989. Every plaintiff is to receive 15 thousand euros in damages. This
is the second ECHR ruling against Romania, after the one in February this year,
under which, 17 people, relatives of those who got killed in the bloody events
in December were to be paid each 15 thousand euros in compensations. The
plaintiffs are complaining about the long criminal proceedings related to the
violent military intervention against the protesters in December 1989. A week
ago, the ‘Revolution File’ was reopened in order to investigate the events,
which led to the fall of the communist regime in Romania. According to official
data in December 1989 more than 1,100 people were killed while 3,000 others
were wounded.