The Week in Review (8-14 October)

A roundup of the main stories in Romania this week.

Corina Cristea, 14.10.2017, 14:04

The political situation in
Bucharest

The Social Democratic Party, the main party in the ruling coalition in
Bucharest, has managed to solve the extremely tense situation within the party,
that risked triggering a new government reshuffle. The tensions generated by
disagreements between the Social Democratic leader Liviu Dragnea and Prime
Minister Mihai Tudose, on whether to keep deputy PM Sevil Shhaideh and Minister
for European Funds Rovana Plumb in the government, have been eased following
both ministers’ decision to resign, alongside another Social Democrat, the
Transport Minister Razvan Cuc. Mihai Tudose has conditioned his further serving
as Prime Minister on the exclusion, from his Cabinet, of the ministers who have
an image problem. In his turn, Liviu Dragnea has said that tensions within the
party have been generated by communication problems between himself and PM
Tudose. In the first half of the year, the insubordination of the Prime
Minister Sorin Grindeanu to Liviu Dragnea, the Social Democratic Party’s
decision maker, forced Parliament’s majority to pass a censure motion against
its own cabinet, something unheard of before.

NATO meeting in Bucharest

Bucharest played host this week to the 63rd annual session of NATO Parliamentary
Assembly that focused on the security situation in the Black Sea area, Russia’s military build-up close to the
Alliance’s borders and cyber threats. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
hailed Romania’s major contribution to the North Atlantic Alliance and
emphasized the country’s participation in peacekeeping missions in Kosovo and
Afghanistan as well as the allocation of 2% of its GDP to defence.
Stoltenberg also said that the Alliance did not want another Cold War or to
isolate Russia, but it was concerned about its military build-up and its lack
of transparency. In turn, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that Romania
would continue to be a trustworthy ally and dialogue partner of NATO. In his
opinion the North-Atlantic Partnership and NATO’s partnership with the European
Union must be consolidated in the context of a deteriorating security
background. The NATO Parliamentary Assembly passed several resolutions focusing,
among other things, on the stability and security in the Black Sea area, the
EU’s tighter cooperation with NATO and on ways of turning information into
weapon.

Romania’s
stand towards Ukraine’s education law

The Parliamentary Assembly of the
Council of Europe on Thursday passed a resolution that firmly criticizes
Ukraine’s new education law that drastically restricts the national minorities’
rights, including the Romanian one, to education in their languages. Bucharest
previously took steps towards preventing the implementation of this law.
Romanian Foreign Minister Teodor Melescanu, alongside his Hungarian, Bulgarian
and Greek counterparts signed a letter in which they voiced their concern as
regards Kiev’s law, while Education Minister Liviu Pop went to Ukraine to plead
against it. Parliament in Bucharest asked for the law to be revised while
President Klaus Iohannis postponed his visit to Kiev. Almost half a million
ethnic Romanians live in the neighbouring Ukraine, mostly in the eastern Romanian
territories annexed by the former Soviet Union in 1940 following an ultimatum
and inherited by Ukraine, in 1991, as a successor state.

The
IMF economic outlook for Romania

The International Monetary Fund has revised upwards its
economic growth forecast for Romania for this year, from 4.2% to 5.5%,
according to the institution’s latest report. Also, in 2018 Romania will see an
advance of up to 4.4% as compared to only 3.4% forecast in April. These
optimistic figures have been prompted by a significant increase in investments,
trade, and industrial output. Another piece of good news from the IMF is that
the unemployment rate is expected to go down, to 5.3% this year and to 5.2% in
2018. The international financial institution has also adjusted its estimates
concerning Romania’s current account deficit, from 2.8% forecast in April to 3%
for this year, and from 2.5% to 2.9% for 2018. Also, according to the latest
World Economic Outlook, Romania and Iceland are expected to report the highest
economic growth rate in Europe this year, of 5.5%. The IMF estimates largely
coincide with the data made public by the National Statistics Institute.

Simona
Halep becomes world no. 1 in women’s tennis

With a run to the final of the China
Open in Beijing, Romania’s Simona Halep became the new WTA World no. 1 on
October 9, when the updated rankings were released. The 26-year-old
becomes the first player representing Romania to achieve this historic
milestone since the computer rankings were introduced in 1975, and will be the 25th
woman overall to hold the no. 1 ranking. In the last 52 weeks, Halep
has won the Madrid Open for the third Premier Mandatory title of her career,
and reached the final of the French Open, the Italian Open
and the Cincinnati Open, and the quarterfinals of Wimbledon. This
season, she’s scored five Top 10 victories and has made the last eight in
11 of her past 13 tournaments. At the conclusion of the 2017 Wimbledon
Championships, Halep became the active player with the longest streak of consecutive
weeks ranked inside the world’s Top 10. Halep
entered the Top 10 for the first time on January 27, 2014, and has been
there ever since.