June 10, 2016 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 10.06.2016, 12:15

EURO
2016 The European Football
Championship kick-started on Stade de France in Paris on Friday evening with the match
pitting the host country, France, against Romania. Playing in the same group A
are also Switzerland and Albania. Following the bloody attacks that hit Paris in
November last year, the French authorities are on high alert, to avoid any
potential attacks during the championship. Some 90,000 police and security forces have been mobilized for the football
championship, which lasts a month. The good running of the sporting events might also be
affected by social events. The workers of the National Railway Company have
been on strike for more than a week now, and that has affected traffic around
Paris. Also, Air France pilots threaten to start a three day strike as of
Saturday, demanding pay rises.

COOPERATION The French
president Francois Hollande and the Romanian PM Dacian Ciolos attended at Stade de France the opening ceremony of the European Football
Championship and also the match between France and Romania. On Friday, Dacian Ciolos met with his counterpart Manuel Valls and together they signed
the updated road-map of the bilateral strategic partnership. Also, the Romanian
PM met with representatives of the French Academy of Agriculture and with the
two Romanian children whose parents were killed during the attacks in Paris, in
November last year. On Thursday, the Romanian PM talked with the Secretary
General of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Angel
Gurria.

CORRUPTION The offense of abuse of power in the form of malfeasance in office has been
identified in over 40% of the files processed by the National-Anti-Corruption
Directorate in Romania (DNA), the DNA chief prosecutor, Laura Codruta Kovesi
has announced. She has stated that, in 2015, the estimated prejudice in such cases exceeded 600 million Euros. The Romanian
state will not be able to recover the money, if Romania’s Constitutional Court
decides to decriminalize the offence of malfeasance in office, Kovesi has warned.

EUROPEAN PROJECT The European
Commission has approved the second stage of the project Extreme Light
Infrastructure – Nuclear Physics (ELI-NP) for the building in Magurele, near
Bucharest, of the most powerful laser in the world. According to a communiqué
made public on Friday by the European Commissioner for regional policy, the Romanian
Corina Cretu, over 140 million Euro from the European Regional Development Fund
will be spent on the continuation of the works that started in 2013, which are
due to be completed in 2018. ELI-NP is part of the Extreme Light
Infrastructure Pan European project, run in Romania, Hungary and the Czech
Republic.

THEATER FESTIVAL As of Friday, the
Romanian city of Sibiu is hosting the International Theater Festival, one of
the biggest events in the world devoted to performing arts. The 23rd
edition of the festival has brought together over 2800 artists from 70
countries, who will participate in some 450 shows and cultural events. The
Grand Square in Sibiu has turned into a huge stage for acrobats, performing on
platforms suspended above the square by means of a huge crane. The theater marathon starts with actors from England, Spain, Poland, the Republic of
Moldova and Romania, and street performances are the attraction of the
pedestrian area in the city’s historical center.

ANDRE RIEU The
famous Dutch violinist Andre Rieu, accompanied by the Johann Strauss Orchestra,
is giving concerts in Bucharest on Saturday and Sunday. This year’s show is a
new one, different from the one in June, when Rieu had no less than seven
performances in the Romanian capital. In November 2015 he came to Bucharest to
show solidarity with the families of the 64 victims of the Colectiv fire.

HANDBALL The Romanian
national women’s handball team will take on the Norwegian, Russian and Croatian
squad in group D of the European Championship, due in December in Sweden,
according to Friday’s drawing of lots. The matches in this group will be held
in Helsingborg. Norway’s record includes six golden medals, three silver and
one bronze at the European Championships. Romania’s best performance was in
2010, when it came in third.