December 15, 2021 UPDATE

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 15.12.2021, 19:55

COVID-19. 829
new Covid-19 cases were reported in Romania on Wednesday, as well as 88
fatalities, including 17 dating from an earlier date. Since the vaccine rollout
kicked off in Romania a year ago roughly 7.6 million people have been fully
vaccinated. Since the start of the pandemic, Romania has reported 1.8 million
cases and almost 58,000 deaths. Amid the anti-vaccine psychosis fuelled by part
of the media, and some politicians and public figures, Romania has the second
lowest vaccination rate in the European Union. Health minister Alexandru Rafila said an emergency order
was approved on a form to be filled in when entering Romania, which must be
done 24 hours prior to this. He said the document was not intended to prevent
travel, but to allow for the swift tracing of the contacts of a person infected
with Covid. The measures comes into effect from 20th December and is
already in use other 18 EU member states.

Measures. The government in Bucharest adopted series of
social measures to benefit children, pensioners and persons with disabilities. These
include an emergency order providing for an increase in child benefits from 1st
January to reach 50 euros for between the
ages of 2 and 18 and 110 euros for children up to two years old and children
with disabilities up to 18 years old. Pensions are also about to grow, with the
lowest pension to reach around 200 euros. These measures will be taken into account
when creating next year’s budget, with a bill in this respect published for
public consultation on Friday and approved by the government next Monday,
before being adopted by Parliament by 23rd December.

Resignation. The minister for research Florin
Roman resigned from the cabinet after he was accused of plagiarism in his
master’s degree paper. Both the centre-right Save Romania Union and the
ultranationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians, in opposition, earlier
called for his resignation or dismissal. Florin Roman tarnishes the position
of minister for research. He tarnishes the idea of meritocracy and competence
for any young person who worked hard in school and for any decent citizen who never
cheated in school. Out with him!, the Save Romania Union Dacian Cioloş posted on his Facebook page. The co-president
of the Alliance for the Union of Romanian George Simion said the minister’s
omissions and lies in his CV do not recommend him for the job of minister for
research and digitalisation. Roman is the first minister to resign from the
government formed by the Social Democratic Party, the National Liberal Union
and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania and which came to
power less than a month ago.

Summit. Romania’s
president Klaus Iohannis is attending the sixth Eastern Partnership summit
under way in Brussels and which brings together EU heads of state and
government and the leaders of the five ex-Soviet partner countries, the
Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. Iohannis said he
would call on the European Union to adopt a more active and frequent
involvement in solving conflicts that affect its partners and to give a chance
to those who wish to do more, giving the Republic of Moldova as an example.
Developing a sustainable and integrated economy, digital transformation and the
creation of a fair society are some of the long-term goals of the policy
regarding the Eastern Partnership and are accompanied by an ambitious regional
plan of economic investment worth 2.3 billion euros. In another move, the
European Union announced plans to grant the Republic of Moldova non-reimbursable
aid worth 60 million euros, which will reach the country by the end of the
year. The European Council will meet on Thursday, with talks expected to tackle
the Covid-19 pandemic, energy prices, migration, EU security and defence and the
situation on the bloc’s borders with Ukraine and Belarus.

Revolution. Romania
celebrated on Wednesday 32 years the first events that led to the anti-communist revolution of 1989. Dozens
of people gathered on 15th December 1989 in Timişoara, in the west
of Romania, to defend Reformed pastor Laszlo Tokes from being evicted by
Romania’s political police, the Securitate. The protests grew in intensity on
December 16 and the communist regime fell a couple of days later. Events like
religious services, exhibitions, concerts and performances are to be carried
out all over the country over this period in the memory of those killed in the
anti-communist uprising. (CM)