June 14, 2016 UPDATE
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Newsroom, 14.06.2016, 12:20
PRESIDENCY – Romanian president Klaus Iohannis has held talks with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella in Bucharest. High on the agenda were ways of stepping up the bilateral strategic partnership between the two countries, the challenges currently facing the European Union and the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw. President Iohannis has referred to the over 1,200,000 Romanians living in Italy and underlined the need for stepping up joint efforts to increase their involvement in Italys political and social life. In turn president Mattarella said the Romanian community in Italy is large, appreciated and has become increasingly integrated adding that the level of cooperation between Italy and Romania is truly exemplary.
ROMANIAN-BULGARIAN RELATIONS – Romanias President, Klaus Iohannis, will pay an official visit to neighbouring Bulgaria on Wednesday and Thursday, for talks with his Bulgarian counterpart Rosen Plevneliev and Prime Minister Boiko Borisov. The talks will cover such issues as ways to boost economic cooperation and two way trade exchanges, the partnership between Bulgaria and Romania, within the EU and NATO, cooperation in South-Eastern Europe, the security situation in the region and migratory pressure exerted on the EU. The two heads of state will attend the opening of a Bulgarian-Romanian business forum. On Thursday, the Romanian president will visit the Sofia-based “Mihai Eminescu Vocational High School with tuition in Romanian. Klaus Iohannis will visit the towns of Plevna and Grivita, to pay homage to the Romanian soldiers who died in the line of duty during the Russian-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Near the town of Marten, the Romanian president will visit the construction site of the gas-interconnecting pipeline between the two countries.
VISIT-Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos on Tuesday started an official visit to Canada, the first visit by a high-ranking Romanian official in the past 10 years. The Romanian Prime Minister will be holding talks with the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other authorities, about a visa waiver for the Romanian citizens. Romania and Bulgaria are the only EU countries, whose citizens still need visas to enter Canada. Last week the two EU members signed a joint letter calling on Canada to lift visas for their citizens. On the other hand, Canada has staunchly supported Romanias integration into NATO, being the first country to have ratified the accession protocols of the candidate countries that were accepted at the NATO summit in Prague on March 28th 2003. The program of the visit also includes a meeting with representatives of the Romanian community in Canada.
MEETING-On Tuesday and Wednesday Romanias Defence Minister Mihnea Motoc will be joining his NATO counterparts for a meeting in Brussels. High on the agenda are the upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw, the allied presence in the Eastern flank and the situation in Afghanistan. On the events sidelines, Minister Motoc met with his counterparts from Turkey and Bulgaria. Before the meeting, the US permanent representative to NATO, Douglas Lute, has said that the North-Atlantic Alliance is with Romania and appreciates the fact that Romania is hosting the anti-missile shield in Deveselu. The US official has also said that if there are actions from any state that threaten not only Deveselu or any other part of Romanian sovereignty then the Alliance will take defending measures.
COMMEMORATION-Bucharest is commemorating 26 years since the 1990 miners raid on Bucharest, which stifled a large-scale protest rally against the leftist government that came to power after the fall of the communist dictatorship in 1989. Against the background of a series of violent events the army had already managed to contain, the then president of Romania, Ion Iliescu invoked a coup attempt by the far right political groups and called on the population to defend democratic institutions. The miners who arrived in Bucharest killed 6 people, wounded hundreds and caused over 1,000 abusive arrests. In 2014, the European Court of Human Rights ruled against Romania asking it to continue investigation in the file of the miners raid in June 1990.
POLITICS – In Romania, the leadership of the Social Democratic Party (the largest leftist party) on Tuesday decided to no longer make a nomination for the position of speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, after the revocation of Valeriu Zgonea, who lost the partys political support. The party leader, Liviu Dragnea, has said that Social-Democrat Florin Iordache will continue to be interim speaker of the Chamber of Deputies until the parliamentary elections in autumn. Former Prime Minister Victor Ponta will no longer run for this position. Valeriu Zgonea has been excluded from the party after he called for the resignation of the party leader, Liviu Dragnea. The latter received a suspended two-year jail sentence for election fraud in the case of the “Referendum of 2012, which was aimed at impeaching former rightist president, Traian Basescu.
FOOTBALL-Romanias national football side is bracing up for the game against Switzerland due on Wednesday as part of the European Championships underway in France. Last week, in the tournaments opening match Romania lost to France two-one, while Switzerland clinched a one-nil win against Albania also in Group A. In another move, Russia received a 150,000 Euro fine and a suspended disqualification sanction, because of the violence caused by its fans in Marseille, relating to Saturdays match with England. In case of new incidents on stadiums, Russia runs the risk of getting eliminated from the final tournament of EURO 2016.
(Translated by Daniel Bilt and Diana Vijeu)
