May 25, 2021 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 25.05.2021, 20:40

US-RUSSIA US president Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin
are to meet in Geneva on June 16th, the White House announced on
Tuesday. ‘The leaders will discuss the full range of pressing issues as we seek
to restore predictability and stability to the US-Russia relationship’, the
White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki has said. This is going to be the first
meeting between the two leaders since Joe Biden’s coming to power and will be
taking place amid serious tensions between the two states. The meeting also comes
after the G7 and NATO summits which are expected to have a joint anti-Moscow position.

MEETING The Senate and the
Chamber of Deputies are to convene in Bucharest on Wednesday for talks over the
National Plan of Resilience and Recovery, Ludovic Orban, the president of the
Chamber of deputies announced on Tuesday. The main opposition party PSD
insisted the government present the plan before Parliament otherwise the Social
democrats may not endorse a European treaty under which the member states are
to pay higher contributions to the EU budget. Romania has pledged to present
the plan to Brussels by the end of May, one month after the date required by
the European Commission.

CAMPAIGN Romania’s Prime Minister Florin Citu on
Thursday announced the government would launch a pro-vaccine media campaign.
Citu says that his role as head of the Executive is to lead a louder campaign
than the anti-vaccine voices promoted by a couple of TV channels. The Prime
Minister has given assurances that non-vaccinated people are not going to be
discriminated against. According to the RO Vaccination platform, since the
vaccine rollout kicked off in Romania in late December 2020, 25.93% of the
eligible population, 16 years old and over, more than 4,170,000 people have got
at least one dose of the anti-Covid vaccine. According to the same sources, 20.69%
of the eligible population, accounting for 3,330,000 people, has also got the booster.
On the other hand, the number of Covid infections is on a downward trend. 381
new infections were reported on Tuesday out of 32 thousand tests conducted in
the past 24 hours. 63 new fatalities have been reported bringing the death toll
to 30,040. 545 patients are being treated in IC units.

AGREEMENT
The EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed to seal off the bloc’s airspace
to Belarusian planes as part of sanctions against the regime of president
Alexander Lukashenko, accused to deviating a Ryanair passenger plane flying
from Athens to Vilnius to arrest dissident
journalist Roman Protasevich.
The 27 EU leaders also asked airlines to avoid flying over Belarus, agreed to
impose additional sanctions, including of an economic nature, and called for
the immediate release of the journalist and his partner Sofia Sapega, who is a
Russian citizen, both of whom were arrested on Sunday. EU leaders also asked
the International Civil Aviation Organisation to investigate what they
described as an unprecedented and unacceptable incident and called for the
expansion as soon as possible of the list of Belarus officials and entities
targeted by European sanctions. Some 88 persons from Belarus, including
president Alexander Lukashenko, as well as seven entities are already banned
from entering the EU and have their assets frozen for repression against the
opposition and the presidential elections of 2020, which the EU believes were
rigged.

(bill)