February 22, 2021

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 22.02.2021, 13:55

VACCINE. A new tranche of 200,000 dozes of Pfizer Covid-19
vaccine has arrived in Romania today. According to the National Committee for
the Coordination of Vaccination Activities, the total doses administered so
far, to more than 800 thousand people, exceeds 1.3 million. The Minister of
Education, Sorin Cîmpeanu, has stated that approximately 60,000 people employed
in the education system want to be vaccinated against COVID-19 next week.
According to the minister, in a first phase, the teaching staff from primary,
secondary, high school and university education benefit from priority vaccination
in mobile centers. He has stated that more than 200,000 employees in the education
system have expressed their readiness for vaccination. 42,000 have already been
vaccinated. In another development, about 1,600 new cases of coronavirus have
been reported today. In total, since the beginning of the pandemic in Romania,
about a year ago, over 780,000 cases of infection have been registered in this
country.

BUDGET. The Romanian Liberal Prime Minister Florin Cîţu
has announced that the draft state and social insurance budgets are to reach
Parliament today, after being amended by
the Legislative Council. He has expressed hope that parliament will adopt the
document as soon as possible and said that, as far as he knows, the
representatives of the PNL – USR PLUS UDMR coalition will not table amendments.
Regarding the amendments requested by the Social Democratic opposition, the
head of the Government considers that they could take Romania out of the
European Union. According to Florin Cîţu, the budgetary impact would stand at
6% and would lead the deficit to 13 percent of the Gross Domestic Product,
which is not possible. The projected deficit is 7.1% of the GDP. In another
move, the first vice-president of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), Sorin
Grindeanu, has stated that the Social Democrats will submit a simple motion
against the Minister of Economy, Claudiu Năsui, after the debate and approval
of the budget. He is accused of blocking a € 500 million funding program.

EU. The Romanian Foreign Minister, Bogdan Aurescu, is
attending in Brussels a meeting with his counterparts from the member states of
the European Union, on the relations with Moscow. According to the Romanian
Foreign Ministry, he will stress that the EU-Russia relations are at a turning
point, as well as the need for European unity, in order to maintain the Union’s
credibility as a foreign policy actor. Following the expulsion of three
European diplomats from Russia this month, just as EU foreign policy chief
Josep Borell was on a visit there, Minister Aurescu will call for new
restrictive measures against Moscow and will emphasize the need for stronger
political engagement with ex-Soviet states from the Eastern Partnership, including
the Republic of Moldova (mostly Romanian-speaking). Before the meeting, Aurescu
will participate, together with European counterparts, in an informal meeting
with representatives of the team of Russian opponent Alexei Navalny. On
Saturday, Navalny, listed as the Kremlin’s main political opponent, received
two sentences in a single day: two and a half years in prison, in a fraud case,
which he says was politically fabricated, and a 9,500 euro fine, on charges of
defaming a supporter of President Vladimir Putin, a nonagenarian veteran of the
Soviet army in World War II.

PROTESTS. Union protests continue in Romania this week.
Some of the miners stranded underground for several days in Lupeni (southwest)
announce that they will go on hunger strike if they do not receive their
salaries and other outstanding benefits. In this regard, a new round of
meetings is taking place today at the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of
Labor. The approximately 70 miners who are protesting underground in the Lupeni
mine, some of them on the fifth day, have received water and food from the Red
Cross and other organizations, and their health is being monitored by mine
rescuers. The protesters are dissatisfied with the delay in wages for the
current month and the fact that they have not received for almost 10 months
some rights provided in the collective labor agreement, such as heating
allowance, transport money and meal vouchers. Also, dissatisfied with salaries
and the allocation of funds, the unions in the Penitentiary Police have
announced a rally in front of the
headquarters of the Ministry of Justice today, followed by other protest
actions in the following days.

INVESTIGATION. An
investigation is underway at the Marius Nasta Institute in Bucharest,
following the incident on Sunday evening, when the air conditioning
installation of the mobile unit for treating patients with COVID-19 started
smoking heavily. The intervention teams acted quickly and closed the unit, and
the patients were moved to the hospital building. No one was injured. The
Minister of Health, Vlad Voiculescu, claims that it was a minor incident. The
event followed another one, in January, also in Bucharest, when a fire broke
out at the Matei Balş National Institute of Infectious Diseases.
Several halls burned and the whole building was affected by smoke. A similar
tragedy took place in November, at the emergency hospital in Piatra Neamţ
(northeast). Both fires resulted in numerous casualties.

ARMY. The main equipment of the first High Mobility
Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), which will be part of the Romanian Army, will
be transported to the headquarters of the 81st Missile Battalion Maior
Gheorghe Şonţu in Focsani (southeast). This is the first unit of the
Romanian Land Forces that will have this system. The first elements arrived, at
the end of last week, in the Black Sea Port of Constanta. They will be
transported on land under the coordination of US and Romanian specialized
structures. Romania bought two years ago, from the American company Lockheed
Martin, three artillery systems based on HIMARS surface-to-ground rockets, at
the price of about 1.5 billion dollars.

TENNIS. Romanian tennis player Simona Halep went down to
third place in the world ranking of professional tennis players (WTA),
published today. The second position is now held by the Japanese Naomi Osaka,
who won the title at the Australian Open on Saturday. We recall that Halep stopped in the quarterfinals of the
first grand slam tournament of the year. The Australian Ashleigh Barty remains
the WTA leader. Romania has 4 more representatives in the top 100: Patricia
Ţig, Sorana Cîrstea, Irina Begu and Ana Bogdan. (M.I)