February 1, 2018

New parliamentary session in Romania, US Embassy to Bucharest organizes debate on human trafficking, Romanian-Polish talks

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Newsroom, 01.02.2018, 13:46

Parliament — The Romanian senators and deputies on Thursday started a new parliamentary session. The Social Democratic Party, the main party in the governing coalition, intends to adopt the law on the sovereign fund for development and investments, the administrative code and the pensions law, while its partners from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats focus on the country’s economic development. The rightwing opposition announced that in the current parliamentary session they intend to block all the initiatives of the ruling coalition meant to change the justice laws.

Government priority — One of the priorities of the government is the development and extension of the Strategic Partnership between Romania and the US, in more domains including the protection and promotion of human rights and fighting human trafficking, said the PM Viorica Dancila in a message she conveyed at a debate on human trafficking organized by the US Embassy to Bucharest. The interior minister Carmen Dan said that Romania is participating in all the efforts made by such organizations as EUROPOL, INTERPOL, EUROJUST, FRONTEX and SELEC in fighting cross-border crime and curbing the negative effects of human and children trafficking, the fight against human trafficking being one of the Interior Ministry’s priorities. The meeting gathered officials of the Magistracy and of the authorities specialized in fighting human trafficking from the US, Romania and the Republic of Moldova.

Bilateral talks — The Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu is holding talks today in Bucharest with his Polish counterpart Jacek Czaputowicz about the two countries’ strategic partnership, the objectives of the group made up of Romania, Poland and Turkey as well as about issues related to the developments in the EU. Romania and Poland have been strategic partners since October 7, 2009 when they signed a joint declaration on their strategic partnership. At present, this partnership is being applied through a plan of common actions running for the period 2016-2020. As regards European issues, the two countries militate for maintaining the allocation of substantial funds for the Common Agricultural Policy. In terms of bilateral trade exchanges, Poland ranks 9th among the countries to which Romania targeted most of its exports in 2017. In Romania, there are more than one thousand Polish companies registered.

Chisinau — The Moldovan Foreign Ministry officials condemn the military drills of the Russian troops deployed in the separatist region of Transdniester. In a press release, the Moldovan Foreign Ministry officials labeled these actions as provocative. Chisinau’s concerns were raised by the fact that the drills undertaken by the operative group of Russian troops also include forces of the separatist regime in Tiraspol. According to the Moldovan Foreign Ministry, these military drills represent a direct and brutal threat to the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Republic of Moldova. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, the exercises are aimed, among other things, at counteracting terrorism and at training the soldiers. The Russian Federation pledged to withdraw its troops and military equipment from the Moldovan territory at the summit in Istanbul held in 1999. So far Russia has only pulled out its heavy artillery.

Protests — Clerks of the Romanian courts and prosecutor’s offices on Thursday protested against the drop in salaries of the people holding executive and management positions whose seniority exceeds 15 years. According to the president of the Court Clerks Association in Romania, Denisa Dindareanu, the clerks started a work-to-rule protest, which does not stop the activity of courts and prosecutor’s offices. However, she said that a spontaneous protest was likely to occur in the future that would stop of the activity of these institutions. Denisa Dindareanu said that protests were caused by the bad salary grid in force and by the government’s decision to transfer the responsibility of paying social security contributions from employers to employees. The work-to-rule protest has been organized in all Romanian courts and prosecutor’s offices, the protest being attended also by clerks that are not affected by these measures. (translation by Lacramioara Simion)