October 22, 2016
CETA negotiations carry on in Brussels
Newsroom, 22.10.2016, 00:00
CETA – Romania will carry on negotiations with Canada on lifting visa requirements for Romanians, irrespective of the decisions on the EU – Canada free trade agreement. President Klaus Iohannis said, at the end of the European Council meeting in Brussels, that talks on this topic would follow their appointed course and that there was no deadline for completing them. Negotiations on the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) have been resumed in Brussels today, after last night they were suspended because of the opposition of the Belgian region of Wallonia, which is against a number of provisions in the text. Romania has pinned its hopes on CETA, on which the lifting of visa requirements for its citizens depended. More specifically, Bucharest had reached a deal with Ottawa to allow visa-free entry for its citizens as of December next year, in exchange for Romania giving up its objections to CETA. In fact, President Klaus Iohannis had announced yesterday morning that an agreement had been reached on a gradual elimination of visas. Because of Wallonias veto, the EU-Canada trade agreement is currently suspended, and so is the issue of visa requirements for Romanians.
OFFICIAL VISIT – The PM of Romania, Dacian Cioloş, says he has only heard praises for the professionalism of the Romanian troops taking part in missions in Sarajevo and Pristina. Dacian Cioloş and the Defence Minister, Mihnea Motoc, were on an official visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo yesterday. In Sarajevo, the two had talks with the commanders of the NATO and EU missions and meetings with the Romanian military taking part in missions in the Western Balkans. PM Cioloş said the region had great strategic importance for Romania, which is interested in ensuring an improvement of the local situation. Romania has 40 troops deployed as part of the EUFOR mission in Bosnia, alongside 20 other countries, including 15 EU member states. In Pristina, the head of the Romanian government announced that in 2017 the number of Romanian troops participating in the KFOR mission in Kosovo would increase, although it would not reach its past levels. At present 56 Romanians take part in NATOs KFOR mission.
ILLEGAL MIGRANTS – Small groups of illegal migrants were found yesterday on Romanias western and north-eastern borders. In the west, 7 Pakistani citizens were caught trying to illegally cross into Romania from Serbia. In the north-east, 6 Afghans attempted the illegal crossing of Romanias Ukrainian border. They said they were planning to reach a western European country.
NATO – The Black Sea region is a geostrategic region where threats for NATO and for its eastern and southern partners overlap, including migration, terror groups and trafficking, said Gen. Nicolae Ciucă, Chief of general Staff of the Romanian Army. He represented Romania at the Strategic Military Partner Conference organised in Bucharest by NATOs Allied Command Transformation. Attending were representatives of 70 NATO member and partner countries. Columbia and Nigeria took part for the first time in talks in this context. The Strategic Military Partner Conference convenes every year and is the main NATO forum discussing the transformations and future challenges for the Alliance and its partners. The main topic of this years talks was the prospective enlargement of partnerships with the North-Atlantic Alliance.
TENNIS – The WTA Finals kick off tomorrow in Singapore. The tournament has 7 million US dollars in prize money. The Romanian Simona Halep, seed no 3 in this competition, yesterday found out her opponents in the group stage. She will play in the Red Group against top seed and world no 1 Angelique Kerber (Germany), Madison Keys (SUA) and Dominika Cibulkova (Slovakia). The White Group includes Polands Agnieszka Radwanska, Karolina Pliskova (Czech Republic), Garbine Muguruza (Spain), with the last spot in this group to be filled by either Russian Svetlana Kuznetsova or Britians Johanna Konta. Simona Halep takes part for the third time in the WTA Finals, after having played the 2014 finals against Serena Williams, and leaving the competition last year in the group stage. The tournament in Singapore is due to end on October 30. Also today, the Romanian player Monica Niculescu (no 51 in the world) takes on Petra Kvitova, of the Czech Republic, in the Luxembourg final, in a tournament with 250,000 US dollars in total prize money.
