October 23, 2015
A roundup of domestic and international news.
Newsroom, 23.10.2015, 12:00
Greece, Hungary, Romania and Spain have not yet fully implemented the EU Timber Regulation, which was introduced to prevent illegal timber entering the EU market, according to a new report from the European Court of Auditors. “As the chain of control is only as strong as its weakest link in the single market, illegal timber could still be imported into the EU via these four countries,” says the Court of Auditors report. According to the Environmental Investigation Agency in Bucharest, one in every two trees is cut down illegally in Romania, which means that around half of all logging in the last ten years has been illegal.
Romania is switching to the wintertime on Sunday morning, when 4:00 a.m. becomes 3:00 a.m. This makes Sunday, October 25, the longest day of the year with as many as 25 hours. The switch to the Eastern European Time does not affect the current timetable of trains. Daylight Saving Time (DST) is the practice of turning the clock ahead as warmer weather approaches and back as it becomes colder again so that people will have one more hour of daylight in the afternoon and evening during the warmer season of the year. The assumption is also that it would decrease the need for artificial light sources and, as a result, save energy. In Romania, clocks will spring ahead one hour on the last Sunday of March.
The Bucharest Government is today passing the second budget adjustment this year. According to the Finance Ministry’s draft ordinance, revenues and expenditure will each go up by around 2.6 billion lei (600 million euros) while de deficit will further stand at 1.85% of the GDP. The Agriculture Ministry will get most of the money. The Transport and Energy ministers, on the other hand, will lose important amounts. The budget of the national health insurance fund will be increased, to finance the rise in salaries in place as of October 1. The Liberal opposition has criticised the fact that, under this budget adjustment, the road infrastructure sector is again underfinanced.
Romania implements its own reconfiguring and adjustment measures of its defensive capabilities to the new realities, the country’s Defense Minister, Mircea Dusa said on Friday in a message on the Romanian Army Day. According to Minister Dusa Romania witnesses, alongside its allies, a very complex security situation. The crisis in Ukraine and the developments at NATO’s southern border have prompted the Alliance to reconsider its priorities. At national level, Romania’s top priority is to strengthen the Army’s operational capability.
European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker has called a mini-summit in Brussels for Sunday, October 25, to tackle the migrant crisis along the Western Balkans route. The leaders of Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia will meet their counterparts from non-EU states Macedonia and Serbia. Tensions have built along the migrant trail after Hungary shut its borders, diverting the flow west to Slovenia, which in turn has also limited arrivals, along with Croatia. Over 12,000 migrants have crossed the border to Slovenia in the last 24 hours alone. In its turn, Greece, the first stage on the refugees’ Balkan route, has asked for additional financial support while Turkey argues that the migrant wave gets bigger because of the military operations around the Syrian city Aleppo.
Romania does not plan to issue any more foreign debt this year, given that the budget currently has a surplus, a Finance Ministry official told Reuters. The Bucharest Government raised 2 billion euros in 10- and 20-year Eurobonds this week, without the safety net of an agreement with the IMF, which is a first after 2009. Romania issued foreign debt four times last year, raising the equivalent of over 5 billion dollars in 10- and 30-year Eurobonds.
