January 27, 2017 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 27.01.2017, 14:32

CSAT Romania’s president Klaus Iohannis on Friday
announced that he had summoned the country’s Higher Defence Council for
Tuesday, January 31st, to adopt a draft budget for the national
security institutions that has been sent by the government. The executive had
previously announced that it would adopt the 2017 draft budget as early as
Friday and it would submit it for Parliament approval. The head of the
executive, Sorin Grindeanu, has given assurances that all the measures
comprised in the programme of the PSD-ALDE majority have been taken into
consideration. The draft budget has been structured on a 5.2% economic growth
and a budget deficit estimated at 2.96% of the GDP. Transports, Agriculture,
Healthcare and the SMEs will benefit more money, whereas the sectors of
education, energy, regional development, the interior and foreign ministries,
the presidential administration, the two Parliament chambers and the
Intelligence Service will see their budgets trimmed.

DNA According to Romania’s
National Anti-corruption Directorate (DNA), 91 culprits were given definitive
prison sentences in December last year in cases instrumented by this structure.
According to a communique issued on Friday, an MP, two county council
presidents, a hospital manager and a high-ranking county police official are to
serve prison sentences. According to the same sources, these sentences are
ranging from 14 years to a one-year suspended prison sentence.

PHONE TALKS Russia has announced that
its president, Vladimir Putin, will be speaking by phone with his US
counterpart Donald Trump on Saturday. The Kremlin, quoted by press agencies,
said the agenda would mainly focus on the main parameters of the bilateral
relations. A spokesman for the government in Berlin on Friday refused to confirm
the news according to which, German chancellor Angela Merkel could also have a
phone conversation with the US president. Events like these are confirmed only
after they have taken place – the same sources explain. The press had earlier
announced that Merkel could talk with Trump by telephone and that one of the
points on the agenda might be Russia. Currently on a visit to the USA, British
Prime Minister Theresa May is the first foreign leader to meet Trump after the
latter’s being sworn in a week ago.

HOMAGE The Romanian Foreign Ministry is
paying homage to the Holocaust victims the world over and has voiced solidarity
with the survivors of the tragic events during WWII. In a press release on
Friday, on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the diplomacy in
Bucharest says that it fully backs the efforts of educating the young
generation in the spirit of human rights observance so that the young people
may understand the consequences of discrimination, Antisemitism and racism.
The Foreign Ministry says the actions are in line with the mandate as chair of
the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance held by Romania between March
2016 and March 2017. The commemoration recalls the liberation of the Nazi death
camps in Auschwitz and Birkenau by the Red Army on January 27th
1945.