February 3, 2022 UPDATE

A roundup of local and international news.

Newsroom, 03.02.2022, 19:41

Covid-19Ro. Romania registered on Thursday over 32 thousand new Covid
cases out of over 100,000 tests and 111 related deaths. Almost 1,000 Covid
patients are in intensive care. The incidence rate in Bucharest passed 24 cases
per one thousand inhabitants – the highest since the beginning of the pandemic.
We recall that, on Tuesday, Romania exceeded the threshold of 40,000 new
infections in 24 hours, out of 122 thousand tests performed. It is the absolute
record since the beginning of the pandemic and more than double the peak of the
previous wave. The government extended the state of alert by a further 30 days
from Monday, 7 February.

Troops. The
United States has announced that it will send nearly 3,000 additional troops to
Romania, Poland and Germany to protect Eastern Europe from a potential
escalation of the crisis triggered by the massing of Russian troops near
Ukraine. One thousand of them will come to Romania. The Pentagon has said these
will be temporary missions, aimed to strengthen the European allies’ defence
against the background of the tensions with Russia. Moscow has denied
plans to invade Ukraine, but has said it is not willing to compromise and warns
that it might take unspecified military action if its demands are not met. Such
demands include NATO’s promise that Ukraine will never become a member of the
alliance.

Foreign affairs. France wants the expansion of
the Schengen area during its current presidency of the EU Council, said the
French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian after a
meeting of the Bucharest Nine Format. He said Paris may deploy several hundred
military to Romania as part of its defence and deterrence policy on NATO’s
eastern flank. The Romanian foreign minister Bogdan Aurescu hosted a round of
talks of the states in the Bucharest Nine Format to discuss the security
situation in the Ukraine and Black Sea neighbourhood. He said the current
crisis is about the overall security of the Euro-Atlantic space, saying allied
states must continue to coordinate with each other to find concrete measures to
deescalate the situation. The meeting was also attended by the Ukrainian
foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba. Talks
looked at the latest developments in the eastern neighbourhood and the Black
Sea region with an impact on overall Euro-Atlantic security. Also on Thursday,
president Klaus Iohannis received the French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.
He emphasised the importance placed by Romania on its strategic partnership
with France, a relationship based on longstanding historical ties and cultural
affinities, dynamic cooperation in many areas and common interests and
objectives.

Corruption. Radu
Mazăre, the former mayor of the Black Sea port of Constanţa recived a final
sentence from the High Court of Cassation and Justice to five years in prison
for bribery and influence peddling in the so-called Polaris case. Initially, in
March 2019, Mazăre received a sentence in the court of first instance of 9
years and 10 months in prison, a sentence reduced on appeal by the Supreme
Court to 5 years, after the judges acquitted the former mayor for some of the
offences. In the same case, businessman Sorin Gabriel Strutinsky was sentenced
to 5 years in prison for accessory to bribe taking. The former Social Democrat
MP Eduard Stelian Martin, the owner of Polaris, was also acquitted. He had
previously received a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence.

Tourism.
Tourist arrivals rose by more than 46% in 2021 compared with the previous year
to reach 9.2 million, with Romanian tourists accounting for some 91% and
foreign tourists for 9%, according to the National Institute for Statistics.
European tourists accounted for some 74% of the total of foreign tourists, with
almost 77% of them from the EU. The average stay in tourist facilities was 2.2
days for both Romanian and foreign tourists. (CM)