June 6, 2017 UPDATE
Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 06.06.2017, 20:25
VISIT Romanian Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu will be paying a working visit to Paris, during which he is to meet his French counterpart Edouard Philippe. The Romanian official will be also attending the ceremony of Romania’s accession to the Nuclear Energy Agency and the Organisation for Cooperation and Economic Development in the presence of its secretary general Angel Gurria. Romania, a traditionally francophone and Francophile country, has had a strategic partnership with France since 2008.
PAY Raising salaries in Romania’s healthcare and education is to be delayed by two months than the date provided in the first version of the unified pay scale bill. Government representatives endorsed the proposal on Tuesday in the Chamber of Deputies’ Labour Committee, before being voted on in a plenary session. As a result, medical personnel and the teaching staff are to get higher salaries beginning March 2018 and not in January next year as initially envisaged. Only in this way the unified pay scale bill can be supported financially, Finance Minister Viorel Stefan explained.
WALL According to government officials in Budapest there is no need for building a wall at Hungary’s border with Romania because the Romanian authorities are acting efficiently to guard the common border. According to Radio Romania’s correspondent in Budapest, the Hungarian Prime Minister’s security advisor Gyorgy Bakondi has said that for the time being there is no need for such a measure but if need be, immediate measures are to be taken but only after talks with the Romanian authorities. Bakondi said the Balkans states have been monitoring their borders more and more effectively blocking migrants by tens of thousands and thus forcing human traffickers to look for new routes; one of these being from Serbia to Hungary via Romania.
ACCESSION Romania’s Foreign Ministry on Tuesday hailed Montenegro’s submission in Washington of the instrument for this country’s NATO accession. The decision to invite Montenegro to join the Alliance was to recognize the country’s major progress in implementing domestic reforms as well as its contribution to the Euro-Atlantic Security, the diplomacy in Bucharest said in a press release. A country that got its independence in June 2006, Montenegro has formally become the 29th NATO member, a move that will favour stability in the Western Balkans, as the Alliance’s secretary general Jens Stoltenberg has pointed out. NATO has now gained control over the entire northern coast of the Mediterranean, from Gibraltar to Turkey’s border with Syria.