November 7 2016, UPDATE
A roundup of domestic and international news
Newsroom, 07.11.2016, 12:16
VISIT NATO appreciates Romanias contribution to its missions and activities said on Monday the NATO Deputy Secretary General Rose Gottemoeller, on the first day of her visit to Bucharest. During the meeting she had with the Romanian Foreign Minister Lazar Comanescu she also talked about the anti-missile system in Deveselu and the fact that Romania had activated a multi-national division with the NATO Multinational Division Southeast, aimed at supporting defense and security in this part of Europe. On Tuesday, Mrs. Gottemoeller will meet with high-ranking officials from 9 allied states in Central and Eastern Europe, namely Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Romania and Slovakia, who will be attending a regional meeting. Mrs. Gottemoeller is the first woman to hold the position of NATO Deputy Secretary General. Previously she held the office of Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security for the U.S. Department of State.
EU POLICY The European Commissioner for Regional Policy, the Romanian Corina Cretu, is paying a two day visit to Sweden as of Monday. The Brussels official will talk with ministers and representatives of the national and regional authorities about implementing the cohesion policy in Sweden. Corina Cretu will visit EU funded projects in the city of Vasetras. On Tuesday, Corina Cretu will open in Stockholm the proceedings of the 7th forum on the EU macro-regional strategy for the Baltic Sea region. 1000 participants will attend the event, which will focus on the future of the region and the main objectives of the Strategy for the year 2030.
CORRUPTION The former head of the National Fiscal Administration Agency (ANAF) Sorin Blejnar was detained on Monday by anti-corruption prosecutors in Ploiesti, southern Romania, for influence peddling. According to the National Anticorruption Directorate, in 2011 Blejnar accepted from a businessman the promise to get 20% of the value of IT contracts concluded with ANAF. The former head of the Agency is accused that, together with other employees of the institution, allegedly got some 3 million Euros in bribe. On Tuesday, Blejnar will appear before the magistrates who will rule on his 30 day preventive detention.
PAY RISE On Monday, the Romanian Chamber of Deputies adopted 15% pay rises and bonuses for the employees in the health-care and education sectors, as of December 1st 2016 and January 1st 2017 respectively. The Liberals, who had criticized the bill before, saying its just electoral bait, refused to participate in the voting. The measures were adopted although the Government had warned that the impact on the budget would stand at some 4.8 billion lei. Also on Monday, the Senate tacitly endorsed a bill on increasing the pension calculation index. Another bill tacitly endorsed by the Senate raises to 500 lei the pensions of the former members of the cooperative associations in agriculture. The bills will be submitted to the Chamber of Deputies, which is the decision-making forum in this matter.
CAR CRASH 24 people wounded in Saturdays pileup on the fog-bound highway linking Bucharest to Constanta (in the southeast) are still in hospital. One of the injured is in a critical condition. Investigators are trying to establish who caused the multi-vehicle accident that killed 4 people. Prosecutors have opened a criminal case file for manslaughter and bodily injury and started the technical verification of the 29 cars involved in the multi-car crash. Several drivers had their licenses suspended for careless driving and failure to maintain safe distance between cars, since fog was very dense on the highway.
AWARD Kasper Holten, the Director of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden, London, was decorated by the Romanian President Klaus Iohannis with the National Order Faithful Service in Rank of Commander. According to a communiqué by the Presidential Administration, the order was granted in recognition for the constant support to Romanian art, the remarkable contribution to promoting Enescu in the world and for promoting Romanias and Romanian cultures image and interests in Great Britain.
BULGARIAN ELECTION In Bulgaria, the candidate of the Socialist opposition, Major General of the Reserve, Rumen Radev, and that of the GERB center-right party, Ţeţka Ţaceva, have obtained most of the votes in Sundays presidential election. They will face each other in a second round of voting scheduled for November 13. The former Commander of the Bulgarian Air Force is ranked 1st, at a small distance from his challenger Ţeţka Ţaceva who is supported by the current power in Sofia and who obtained 22.5% of the votes. The Bulgarian PM Boiko Borisov said his party obtained best results, this landslide victory being due to their coalition with other parties. He announced he would resign if General Radev won the presidential election.
US ELECTION On Tuesday Americans will vote for their president choosing between the Democrat Hillary Clinton, the wife of the former president Bill Clinton, and the Republican billionaire Donald Trump. Polls show a 3-4% advantage for the Democrat candidate, a percentage which is within the limits of the margin of error. If Hillary Clinton wins the election she will carry on the projects started by Barack Obama, namely involvement in the international coalition against terrorism and strengthening of NATOs eastern flank in order to discourage Russia. Analysts say Donald Trumps victory would critically change the situation, in the sense that the US will be more open towards Moscow and will no longer receive refugees from Syria.
HANDBALL – Romanias mens handball team on Sunday defeated the Polish team 28-23 in Cluj-Napoca (northwest). This is one of the teams most resounding victories of the past years against Poland, bronze medallist at last years World Handball Championship. The match counted for Group 2 of the preliminaries of the 2018 European Mens Handball Championship. Trained by Xavier Pascual, who also trains the famous FC Barcelona, the Romanian handballers also won the away match against Belarus last week. Romania is the group leader with 4 points, being followed by Belarus with 2 points, Serbia 2 points and Poland 0 points. The next match of the Romanian mens handball team will be against Serbia on home ground. The match is scheduled for May 2017. Romania has not managed to qualify to the final of a European Championship since 1996, the latest final tournament in which they participated being that of the 2011 World Champion.
