October 30, 2015 UPDATE

A roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 30.10.2015, 12:15

The former president of Romania, Traian
Basescu, may be prosecuted in a case involving the kidnapping of three Romanian
journalists in Iraq in 2005, a Bucharest court decided on Friday, citing abuse
of office and conflict of interests among the charges. Back in 2009, the then
leader of the Greater Romania Party, Corneliu Vadim Tudor, filed a complaint with the General
Prosecutor’s Office, accusing Traian Băsescu and his former Interior Minister,
the current co-president of the National Liberal Party, Vasile Blaga, of having
appropriated 4 million US dollars from the amount paid by the Romanian state as
ransom for the three journalists. The probe into Vasile
Blaga was closed in 2010, and prosecution was ruled out. Traian Basescu finds
the accusations ridiculous and views the case as an offence to Romania.

The
Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said on Friday, at the 4th Forum of
the EU Strategy for the Danube Region (EUSDR), held in Ulm, Germany, that the next step to be made, after the setting up of the EUSDR
mechanisms, is to start implement the strategy. The Romanian Foreign Minister
drew attention to the fact that, through its macro-regional approach, the EUSDR
is an important tool for identifying viable solutions. This year, the Forum of the EU
Strategy for the Danube Region gathered over 1,100 participants, from
the 14 countries that support the strategy.

On
Friday, Nicolae Timofti, the President of the Republic of Moldova, the former
Soviet country with a predominantly Romanian-speaking population, designated
the Liberal Deputy Prime Minister Gheorghe Brega as interim Prime Minister, following the dismissal on
Thursday of the government headed by the Liberal – Democrat Valeriu Strelet.
According to Radio Chisinau, Brega has stated that the priority for Moldova is
the formation of a pro-European government. The EU has announced it is closely
monitoring the political situation in the Republic of Moldova. In a statement
issued by the press office of the High
Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security
Policy, Federica Mogherini, Brussels
calls on Chisinau to form a new and stable government as soon as possible. The
new government will have to fight against corruption, solve the crisis facing
the banking sector and to negotiate a fresh agreement with the IMF, which is
crucial for guaranteeing the country’s macroeconomic stability, the communiqué
also reads.

The foreign powers that support rival parties in the Syrian war announced in Vienna on Friday, after the first negotiations on the conflict in that country, that talks would be resumed in two weeks’ time. It was for the first time that Iran took part in such talks. Washington, Paris and their Western and Arab allies want a clear schedule for president Bashar al-Assad’s leaving power, while Russia and Iran insist that there should be a political transition in Syria, with Assad playing a part in that. Also on Friday, the US announced it would deploy a 50 – strong special contingent to northern Syria, to participate on the ground in the effort to combat the Islamic State. The war, which has been going on for four years, started out as a rebellion against president Bashar al-Assad and has so far killed over 250,000 people.

The Bucharest
Tribunal on Friday endorsed the request made by the National Anti-corruption
Directorate for Gheorghe Nichita, the suspended mayor of Iasi, in north-eastern
Romania, to be placed under police custody, pending trial, for 30 days. Nichita
is accused of bribe-taking. In the same case, the court ruled that the
businessman Tiberiu Urdareanu be put under house arrest. They are being
investigated by anti-corruption prosecutors in a case regarding the awarding of
a contract worth 15 million Euro from community funds.

Romania
might reach an absorption rate of over 90% by the end of the 2007-2014 National
Rural Development Programme, which means that more than 9 billion euros from
national and European funds will have been attracted into the sector, said
George Turtoi, secretary of state with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural
Development. This programme is the instrument under which non-reimbursable
funds are allotted for private and public investments that ensure the
development of villages in Romania. The total funds earmarked under this
programme were 9.67 billion euro, which should have been contracted by the end
of 2013, but can still be paid until the end of 2015, Agerpres reports.

Nine
central and eastern-European countries will take part in Bucharest on November 4
in a high-level meeting, attended by the NATO Deputy Secretary General,
Alexander Vershbow. He has recently said that there are risks when Russia gets
involved in operations close to NATO territory. The President of Romania, Klaus
Iohannis, who will be hosting the summit, has announced that the participants will
issue a joint statement regarding the adjustment of NATO to the current
security context.

Romania ranks 2nd
in Central and Eastern Europe, after Poland, in terms of the performance of the
companies operating in the field of technology. The classification, made by the
Deloitte consulting and financial audit company, is based on the increase in
revenues generated over a period of four years. Romania has 10 companies in
this classification, with an average growth of over 500%. Most of them produce
software programs and the best one, ranking 6th in the
classification, provides online-payment services. This year the classification
includes 50 companies from nine countries: Poland, Romania, Croatia, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Serbia.