January 27, 2016 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 27.01.2016, 12:30

The European Commission’s report under the
Cooperation and Verification Mechanism published on Wednesday reconfirms the
continuous and consistent progress Romania has made in all the fields assessed,
government sources in Bucharest have announced. According to the Executive,
this third consecutive annual report is proof of the durable and sustained
reforms of the judiciary and the fight against corruption. The government
believes that acknowledging progress could be better highlighted through the
introduction of a date on the completion of this monitoring by the European
Commission. President Klaus Iohannis has also confirmed Romania’s upward trend
in meeting the objectives included in the mechanism, Bucharest’s commitment to
strengthening the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary being
irreversible. In the aforementioned report, the European Commission notices
Romania’s progress in reforming the judiciary and in the fight against
corruption. The report praises the activity of the anti-corruption agencies at
the same time criticizing Parliament for hindering the anti-corruption fight.
The legislature was also being criticized for turning down requests coming from
the judiciary, without however motivating its decisions. The European
Commission expects the authorities to step up efforts in 2016 mainly focusing
on preventing acts of corruption and providing the right conditions so that
judges can do their job properly.

The
Permanent Bureau of the Romanian Senate has submitted to the Legal Committee a
request from the National Anti-corruption Directorate on commencing penal
prosecution in the case of Romania’s former deputy Prime Minister and Interior
Minister Gabriel Oprea. Oprea has invited his Senate colleagues to vote in
favour of his prosecution saying that he doesn’t want to benefit from
legislative immunity as he is completely innocent. Oprea is facing charges of
abuse of office with undue benefit for himself and other persons during his
mandate. He illegally used the Interior Ministry’s human and material resources
for his personal benefit asking to be accompanied by motorcades while
traveling.

A pair made up of Romanian tennis
player Horia Tecau and the American Coco Vandeweghe has qualified for the mixed
doubles semi-finals of the Australian Open, the year’s first Grand Slam
tournament after defeating Americans Bob Bryan / Bethanie Mattek-Sands, seeded
2nd in the competition. The Romanian-American pair will be meeting
in the semis a pair made up of Andreja Klepac of Slovenia and Treat Huey of the
Philippines. Romania will benefit from the participation of its best tennis
player, the world’s number two Simona Halep in the Fedcup game against the
Czech Republic due in Cluj Napoca, western Romania over February 6th
and 7th. Halep had initially announced she was unable to join the
Romanian side due to a planned nose surgery. The world’s number 7 Petra Kvitova
will be playing for the Czech team.

Romania ranks 58th
in Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perceptions Index. With 46 points,
as compared to an average of 65.36 at EU level, Romania is among the EU member
states with the lowest number of points, alongside Bulgaria, Greece and Italy.
Ranking first, for the fourth year in a row, is Denmark, the country with the
lowest perceived level of corruption the world over. North Korea and Somalia
are at the bottom of the classification, with only 8 points. The points
accumulated by a country/ territory show the perceived level of corruption on a
scale from zero (highly corrupt) to 100 (very clean). 168 countries have been
included in Transparency International’s 2015 Corruption Perceptions
Index.

Romania is affected
by obsolete medical assistance structures, the European Medical Systems Index
shows. Last year, Romania went up three positions and is now on the 32nd
place, with only 527 out of a total of 1,000 points. In one of the most
important categories, treatment result, Romania ranked at the bottom of the
classification, alongside Macedonia.
Bucharest also got a low number of points for other chapters such as
infantile mortality rate,
abortion rate and cancer survival rate. The
report, drafted by a Swedish company also shows that Romania, just like Albania
and Bulgaria, have a high and costly hospitalization rate.

Romania wants to contribute to the
consolidation of education regarding the Holocaust so that the lessons of the
past may become foundations for peace and stability, Romanian Foreign Minister
Lazar Comanescu said on Wednesday on the International Holocaust Remembrance
Day. According to Comanescu, in March Romania will be taking over the
chairmanship of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. We recall
that Romania officially recognized the Holocaust in 2004 and a Holocaust
memorial was inaugurated in Bucharest in 2009.