October 4, 2022 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 04.10.2022, 20:00

ESPIONAGE Prosecutors with the Directorate Investigating Organised
Crime and Terrorism Offences (DIICOT) have indicted 4 Romanian and foreign
nationals as part of an espionage inquiry targeting the Serbian company NIS
Petrol, a subsidiary of the Russian energy giant Gazprom. Prosecutors have
ordered searches in Bucharest and Timișoara, both at the company headquarters, and
at the homes of a number of employees, confiscating documents and data storage devices.
The four are accused of having traded classified information and of
facilitating the unauthorised transfer of data concerning Romania’s mineral reserves,
prosecutors say. In 2009, Gazprom bought the majority stake in NIS under an
agreement signed by Belgrade and Moscow.

ECONOMY Romania’s economy
is expected to grow by 4.6% this year, the World Bank announced on Tuesday. The
estimate is better than the one made public in June, when the figure only
stood at 2.9%. The improvement is based on robust private consumption and early
signs that investments would pick up, but the outlook depends on the
developments in Ukraine and their impact on the European economy on the whole,
the institution says.

MOTION USR Deputies, in opposition, together with MPs from the Force
of the Right, have tabled a simple motion in the Chamber of Deputies against
the interior minister Lucian Bode, whom they accuse of incompetence and
protecting party interests. The USR leader Cătălin Drulă says Bode must answer,
among other things, to allegations that the Romanian Police purchased new cars
through public procurement procedures that favoured companies linked to the Liberal
Party. Bode is also criticised for failing to reach a number of targets,
including the electronic monitoring of offenders and the interior
ministry reform. The motion will be discussed and voted on next Tuesday.

LEGISLATION A draft law regulating the judge and prosecutor
professions was endorsed on Tuesday in the Chamber of Deputies. The bill had
passed all the required stages of the legislative process, including the approval
of the Higher Council of Magistrates, the justice minister Cătălin Predoiu said.
The act was criticised however by the USR and AUR parties, in opposition. The
decision-making body in this case is the Senate. The bill is the 3rd
normative act in a law package regulating the judiciary, next to one on the
Higher Council of Magistrates and the organisation of courts, which have
already been endorsed by the Chamber of Deputies.

FUNDING Romania may get about EUR 1.5 billion for energy
independence projects and for fighting energy poverty, following the
endorsement of the REpowerEU plan by the Economic and Financial Council in
Luxembourg. Romania is the 6th EU member state to benefit from the
new funding, said the finance minister Adrian Câciu. He explained that during
negotiations the funding earmarked for Romania practically doubled compared to
the original proposal made by the European Commission this May.

NOBEL The Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded to
Alain Aspect (France), John F. Clauser (USA) and Anton Zeillinger (Austria) for
their revolutionary experiments with entangled photons, establishing the
violation of Bell inequalities and pioneering quantum information science.
Their findings have laid the foundation for a new era of quantum technology. (AMP)