February 24, 2021 UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 24.02.2021, 20:00
COVID-19 IN ROMANIA – The vaccination of education
employees, through school inspectorates, stared on Wednesday in Bucharest and
most counties in Romania. The whole procedure will take until March 10 for the
first dose of vaccine, and authorities estimate that 60,000 people will be
immunized during this period. So far, more than 42,000 teachers have already
been vaccinated through the specially created national online platform.
Meanwhile, about 80,000 doses of the Moderna vaccine have arrived in the
country on Wednesday, which will be stored to ensure boosters for those already
vaccinated with the first dose. Since the start of the vaccination campaign in
Romania on December 27, a total of almost 2 million doses of vaccine have been
received, most of them from Pfizer. The serum from AstraZeneca has also been
administered in Romania for about ten days now. 3,300 new cases of coronavirus
infection were reported on Wednesday, following some 34,000 tests run at
national level. Another 73 related deaths have also been reported, and 1000
people are in intensive care.
COVID-19
IN THE WORLD – Worldwide,
more than 112 million people have been infected with the new coronavirus since
the beginning of the pandemic, more than a year ago. About 88 million have been
cured, and nearly 2.5 million have died. The World Health Organization has
announced that the death toll has fallen for three consecutive weeks, and the
number of confirmed cases of coronavirus has also continued to decline.
Meanwhile, European countries are making plans to ease restrictions and resume activities,
but are acting cautiously against the more contagious strains of the new
coronavirus. The European Commission has called on Belgium, Denmark, Finland,
Germany, Hungary and Sweden to drop restrictive measures imposed unilaterally
at the borders. The six states have ten days to justify the restrictions. In
order to curb the spread of the new variants, Italy is isolating more and more
localities. For its part, France has for the first time taken the measure of
territorial isolation of the population.
EUROPEAN
COUNCIL – Romania’s
President, Klaus Iohannis, on Thursday and Friday is attending the
extraordinary meeting of the European Council, held in videoconference format,
the presidency reports. The agenda for talks includes elements pertaining to
the coordination of the European Union in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic
and actions in the healthcare sector. Moreover, EU leaders will tackle topics
in the field of security and defense, especially EU-wide cooperation and
EU-NATO complementarity and aspects related to the Southern Vicinity of the
European Union.
BUDGET –The specialized committees of
Romania’s parliament will start debates on the state and social security
budgets for 2021 on Thursday afternoon, during which the parliamentary groups
can submit amendments to the draft drawn up by the Government. The discussions
in the committees are expected to be completed by Saturday, and the vote in
plenary on the two documents to take place next Tuesday. The draft law for
approving the ceilings, which must be adopted before the state budget, will
also be debated and voted according to a tight calendar. The document was
endorsed by the Senate and on Wednesday was voted by the Chamber of Deputies,
the decision-making body on this matter. The ceilings bill sets the caps on
deficits and staff expenditure. The document stipulates that the ceiling of the
budget deficit will be 7.16% of the GDP this year, and personnel spending will
stand at 9.8%.
PROTESTS – Trade union protests continue
in Romania. On Wednesday, protests organized by the PUBLISIND Federation,
affiliated to the National Trade Union Bloc, were staged in Bucharest and in
the country’s prefectures against the freezing of salaries and bonuses, the
non-indexation of pensions against inflation, and the lack of a minimum wage
increase correlated with rising prices. PUBLISIND has members from the police,
border and penitentiary police, central and local public administration, social
assistance, court registry, sports and youth, finance and financial or environmental
control. Also on Wednesday, the Meridian National Trade Union Confederation and
the Federation of Railway Transport Trade Unions in Romania protested in front
of the transport ministry headquarters. Meanwhile, the miners who blocked
themselves in the underground of the Lupeni coal mine, in the Jiu Valley
(center-west), ended the protest that had started six days earlier, after they
were informed about the provisions of the agreement, concluded by their leaders
and the Ministry of Labour, under which they will receive all outstanding
salaries and other benefits they are entitled to. Prime Minister Florin Cîţu
said the Government has adopted a decision whereby all the payments stipulated in
the collective employment agreement, tantamount to some €2.25 million, will be
paid.
SPECIAL PENSIONS – President Klaus Iohannis has
promulgated the law eliminating the special pensions for senators and deputies.
The law was endorsed by Parliament last week. All parties, except the
Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians, which abstained, voted in favour of the
bill initiated by the Social Democratic Party to eliminate special pensions.
The President of the Chamber of Deputies, Ludovic Orban, has stated that this
is just the first step. We will have to fearlessly attack all the
legislation in the field, in order to eventually make sure that all pensions in
Romania are established based on the principle of contribution, Ludovic
Orban said. 800 former MPs benefit from these special pensions, amounting to
some €10 million a year, paid from the state budget.
POSEIDON 21 – Over 700 soldiers, 13 military
ships, 9 aircraft, a pyrotechnic intervention truck and a remote-controlled
underwater robot will be deployed during the ‘Poseidon 21’ exercise organized
by the Romanian Naval Forces between February 26 and March 6. It is the first
multinational exercise in 2021 in the Black Sea. Forces and means from
Bulgaria, France, Greece, Romania, Spain, USA and Turkey will participate. With
a high degree of complexity, ‘Poseidon 21’ is included in the NATO Training
Program proposed by Romania at the NATO Summit in Warsaw, in 2016, to strengthen
security measures on the European south-eastern flank, as well as to ensure a
continuous presence in the Black Sea region. (M.I. & V.P.)
