March 6, 2014 UPDATE
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Valentin Țigău, 06.03.2014, 13:46
The United Arab Emirates has announced a visa waiver for another 13 EU member states, including Romania and Hungary, the United Arab Emirates’ press agency has announced. The aforementioned visa waiver is due to come into effect on March 22nd when the citizens of all 28 EU members will have the possibility of traveling to the Emirates without a visa.
Parliament in the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet country with a Romanian-speaking majority, has voiced profound concern about the latest events in Ukraine as well as solidarity with the European future of this country. At the same time, MPs in this republic are urging the international community to use all the mechanisms in order to stop the conflict and achieve peace in Ukraine. The statement has been criticized by the communist opposition, which says the text violates the friendship agreement between the Republic of Moldova and Russia.
The Russian Federation on Thursday started the biggest air defence exercise in the west of the country, at its borders with Europe, Russian press agencies have announced. For the first time in its history, Russia has gathered all its air defence forces in the Western Military District and some of the air defence formations of its northern fleet at the firing range of Kapustin Yar, outside the southern Russian city of Astrakhan. 35 hundred servicemen and over one thousand pieces of military and special hardware are involved in the exercise.
The European union has adopted a series of political sanctions against Russia, suspending negotiations on a visa agreement and has also evoked the possibility of economic sanctions unless the situation in Ukraine improves. At the summit on Thursday, EU leaders adopted a gradual strategy on sanctions in order to bring Moscow to the negotiation table over the crisis in Ukraine. At the same time, they have agreed to sign with the interim government in Kiev the political chapters on the country’s association with the EU, before the May elections in Ukraine. The European Council has described a decision by the authorities in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to ask to become part of the Russian Federation and stage a referendum on this issue without Kiev’s agreement as unacceptable and illegal. President Traian Basescu of Romania, who attended the meeting, underlined that Romania was the first country to term the Russian intervention in Ukraine as an aggression. Basescu said Romania wanted to participate in the OSCE observation mission in Ukraine, one of the reasons being the existence of a Romanian community of 400 thousand people living in that country.
According to forecasts of the main macro-economic indicators, published by the National Forecast Commission, the rate of inflation in Romania stands at 3.4% in 2014, and will drop down to 2.2% in 2017. In the coming four years, the increase in consumption prices will stand around the multi-annual inflation rate set by the National Bank of Romania, namely 2.5%, plus/minus one percentage point. For the same timeframe, the Commission forecast an exchange rate of 4.4 lei per one Euro. The National Bank of Romania estimates for this year a 3.5% inflation rate.
The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, has said in an interview to Agerpres news agency that Romania deserves to be part of Schengen and any postponement of its accession is caused by some of the member countries’ domestic problems. Schulz has stated that the Romanian state has fully observed the accession requirements, has put a lot of effort into this endeavor and the results are visible. He has also stressed that any attempt at linking separate issues, such as the free movement of EU workers and Schengen accession must not be accepted. Schulz has promised he will fight for all member countries and EU citizens to benefit from equal treatment.
Four Romanian women tennis players are participating in the Indian Wells tournament in the US, with 6 million dollars in prize money. Sixth seeded Simona Halep, currently ranked 7th in the world, and Sorana Carstea, ranked 25th, have qualified straight to the second round. In the first round, Monica Niculescu and Alexandra Cadantu will play against Marina Erakovici from New Zealand and Coco Vandeweghe from the US respectively. In another move, this week Simona Halep has been nominated by the International Tennis Federation for the 2014 Fed Cup heart Awards. The nomination was the result of Halep’s major contribution to Romania’s qualification for the Fed Cup World Group, which is the women’s counterpart of Davis Cup. In the play-off ties, scheduled for April 19 and 20 in Bucharest, Romania will meet Serbia.
