July 22, 2015 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 22.07.2015, 12:15

Livu
Dragnea will be the interim president of the Social Democratic Party, number
one in the ruling coalition in Romania, until the party congress due in
November. The decision was made by the party leaders following Prime Minister
Victor Ponta’s decision to step down as party president. Liviu Dragnea, the
political coordinator of the Social Democratic Party, won against Rovana Plumb, the current interim leader and minister
in the Ponta Cabinet. Dragnea has announced that the Social Democratic Party
will keep on supporting the prime minister. Dragnea was executive president of
the party and development minister, positions that he left after he was given a
suspended sentence of one year in prison in a case concerning the 2012
referendum on the impeachment of the then president of the country, Traian
Basescu. Victor Ponta gave up all political functions in the party after the
National Anticorruption Directorate started prosecuting him for forgery, tax
evasion and money laundering, which he allegedly committed when he was a
lawyer, in 2007.

Prime
Minister Victor Ponta said on Wednesday he wanted the Fiscal Code issue to be
settled by September 1st, through an extraordinary Parliament session. He
stressed that the procedure was agreed upon by the ruling coalition. The Prime
Ministered defended again the document developed by the Executive, saying that
the new Fiscal Code, agreed by the business environment and endorsed by
Parliament, would keep Romania on the track of economic growth. Last week,
president Klaus Iohannis sent the fiscal code back to parliament for
re-examination, saying its enforcement would trigger serious economic
imbalance.

Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu is on a two-day visit to
Montenegro, alongside his counterparts from Poland, Croatia and Hungary. The
four officials will meet with the president of Montenegro, Filip Vujanovic,
Prime Minister Milo Dukanovic and other high-ranking officials. Initiated by
the Romanian Foreign Ministry, the visit takes place against the background of
NATO’s assessment of the progress made by Montenegro in preparation for its
accession and is evidence of the constant support that Romania has granted this
candidacy, reads a communiqué issued by the Romanian Foreign Ministry. The main
objective of this joint visit is to convey a powerful message of support and
encouragement for the ongoing process of reform implementation that Montenegro
needs in order to join the alliance.

Between
2013 – 2014 some 30,000 workers from EU member countries, including Romania, were
supported by the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to find jobs, after
they had been sacked due to the economic crisis and the effect of
globalisation, reads a communiqué issued by the European Commission. According
to a report made public on Wednesday, between 2013 – 2014, 115 million Euros
from the EGAF were spent to support
workers from Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland,
Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Spain. Another 94 million Euros
were added from national resources.

On
Wednesday, the Romanian Government passed the bill regarding on macroprudential
surveillance of Romania’s financial system and decided to set up the National
Committee for Macroprudential Surveillance, whose president will be the
Governor of the National Bank of Romania, Mugur Isarescu. The committee will
coordinate the management of financial crises, which means that it will
recommend the necessary measures to reduce the risk of contamination in case
one or several participants in the financial system is faced with difficulties
that have a systemic impact and will monitor the implementation of such
measures. According to the Executive, the bill has a positive impact on the
business environment, because financial stability helps create an economic
environment that favours the proper implementation of business strategies.

The ‘Henri Coanda’ International Airport in Bucharest
now has a system in place that can detect nuclear and radioactive materials.
The system was inaugurated on Wednesday and is a donation made by the US, under
a joint program regarding the detection and discouragement of smuggling of
nuclear materials. In Romania, such equipment existed only on some
border-crossing points, in ports and railway stations. The inauguration
ceremony was attended by the Romanian Interior Minister Gabriel Oprea and the
US ad-interim Charge d’affaires Duane Butcher. The US
official announced that the US would continue to donate such equipment to
Romania. He also said that in 2016 radiation portal monitors would be installed
in critical points on Romania’s borders with Ukraine, Moldova and
Bulgaria.