July 14, 2023

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Newsroom, 14.07.2023, 13:55

VISIT The Bulgarian Prime
Minister Nikolai Denkov is today paying a formal visit to Bucharest for talks
with his Romanian counterpart Marcel Ciolacu. Denkov’s visit comes after on
Wednesday, the European Parliament reconfirmed its support for the accession of
Romania and Bulgaria to Europe’s border-free area, Schengen. Through a
resolution endorsed with a land-slide majority, the MEPs have called on the EU
Council to approve the candidature of the two countries by the end of the year.
The document says that Romania and Bulgaria are fulfilling all the criteria to
join the Schengen zone that
the exercise of the right of veto, without having presented any
justification of a legal nature related to the accession criteria, fuels
anti-European sentiment and harms the economy. The European Parliament emphasizes
that Romanians and Bulgarians are discriminated against, because they face
delays, bureaucratic difficulties and additional costs when traveling or doing
business abroad, in comparison with the Schengen Area citizens. The European
Parliament also asks the Commission to estimate the financial losses, lost
gains and environmental damage that Romania and Bulgaria have incurred, since
June 2011, due to not being members of the Schengen area and to analyze the
possible compensation mechanisms.

FOOTBALL
The
football matches pitching Otelul Galati against UTA Arad and Rapid Bucharest
against Sepsi Sfantu Gheorghe are opening tonight the 2023-2024 edition of
Romania’s domestic football championship also known as the Superleague. We
recall that on Wednesday, the champions, Farul Constanta, secured a 1-0 home
win against Sheriff Tiraspol of the Republic of Moldova, in the first round of
the Champions League’s preliminaries. The return match takes place in Tiraspol
next week. The team that qualifies will be playing the winner of the double
match pitching Maccabi Haifa of Israel against Hamrun Spartans of Malta. The
Israeli side secured a four-nil win in the first match. Three Romanian sides
are playing in the Conference League. In the second preliminary round, the
former champions CFR Cluj will be up against Adana Demirspor of Turkey. The
winners of Romania’s Cup and Super-Cup, Sepsi will be playing CSKA Sofia of
Bulgaria while the vice-champions FCSB will be up against CSKA 1948 Sofia. The
first games are due on July 24th and the return ones a week later.

CARE
Inspections have been carried out at more than two thousand social foster homes
and care centers in Romania in the past days. 20 of these, most of them in
Bucharest, have been closed down. Activity in other 30 facilities of this kind
has been suspended and fines of 2 million Euros have been applied. Two
inspectors with the County Agency for Payment and Social Inspection have been
apprehended for having failed to properly asses the situation in a foster
center for the disabled. The first leading figure to step down amid the scandal
known in Romania as ‘The Retirement Centers of Horror’, was the country’s
Social-Democratic Minister of Labour Marius Budai. According to some sources,
Social-Democratic leaders are considering the idea of ending the political
support for Family Minister Gabriela Firea, after she rejected the allegations
that she was connected to the culprits in the aforementioned file.

PARADE France’s President
Emmanuel Macron is today attending the usual military parade on Champs-Elysees
on the country’s national day. The event’s special invitee is Indian Premier
Narendra Modi. According to Radio Romania’s correspondent in Paris, the
security measures are at an unprecedented level in order to prevent urban revolts
like those last month. Elite units of the police and gendarmerie backed by
helicopters and armored vehicles are to supervise the ceremonies. Last year,
shortly after the end of the parade, in the so-called sensitive areas on the
outskirts of Paris as well as in Marseille and Lyon, police precincts were
attacked, cars set on fire and shops looted. The risk seems to be higher this
year mainly after the incident of the teenager shot by the police during a
traffic stop and after hundreds of arrests and prison sentences among young
people for aggression and vandalism at the end of June.

STATISTICS
according to sources with the Border Police General Inspectorate on Thursday, 147,517
people entered Romania through the border checkpoints, of whom 17,503 were
Ukrainian nationals. According to a press release issued on Thursday, starting
on February 10, 2022, two weeks before the Russian army invaded their country, over
5 million Ukrainians have entered Romania. The number of Ukrainian citizens who
took up employment in Romania after the start of the war reached an all-time
high last month – the Romanian Labor Ministry says. According to ministry
sources, at the national level, 6,810 employment contracts were concluded for
Ukrainian citizens, the highest level since February 24, 2022 until now. All in
all, the ministry says, that 7,972 active contracts of Ukrainian citizens have
been registered, of which 6,810 have been concluded after the start of the
Russian invasion. 1,452 of the Ukrainians who chose employment in Romania are
working in the manufacturing industry, and 1,181 in the construction industry.
Another 737 are employed in the trade domain. From the point of view of the
areas in which they chose to work, the most (2,770) found work in Bucharest,
and 418 in Timiş county (west).

(bill)