The Week in Review: April 28-May 4

A look at the main events of the week in Romania.

Roxana Vasile, 04.05.2019, 14:09

The Romanian Prime Minister visits Poland

On Wednesday and Thursday, the
Romanian Prime Minister Viorica Dancila was on a visit to Poland. On the first
day, she attended in Warsaw a meeting of the heads of government of the
countries that have joined the EU after 2004. Romania is and will continue to
be a supporter of the European project based on convergence, cohesion and
solidarity among the member states, said Prime Minister Dancila, also stressing
that cooperation is needed, without any tension between the East and the West,
between big and smaller countries, for the EU to function efficiently. To
Romania, joining and integrating into the EU meant development, modernisation,
economic growth and a visible improvement of the quality of citizens’ lives,
Viorica Dancila also stressed. She gave assurances that the European project
will keep on having Romania as an active partner.

On Thursday, the second day of her
visit to Poland, the Romanian Prime Minister joined the thousands of people who
took part in the so-called March of the Living, a symbolic event meant to honour the six
million victims of the Holocaust. The participants marched along the 3 km that
separate the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz and Birkenau. Before the
start of the march, the Romanian Prime Minister made an appeal to the younger
generations, asking them to combat any form of extremism, intolerance, racism
and anti-Semitism, by strengthening their own education. In her opinion, the
tragic events that occurred during WWII should never be repeated, and the means
to combat anti-Semitism must be identified, for everybody to benefit from a
democratic future.

Extreme weather in Romania

Extreme weather phenomena have created
lots of problems this week, especially in the south of the country. The
problems started on Tuesday evening, when eight counties and the capital
Bucharest were affected by storms and heavy rain. More than one thousand fire-fighters
helped the local population and authorities, evacuating the water accumulated
in basements and removing the trees and utility poles felled down by the storm.
In the county of Calarasi, in the south, an average-size tornado, a phenomenon
which is extremely rare in Romania, uprooted trees and damaged dozens of
houses. It forced a bus off the road and overturned it in a nearby field. 39
people were in great danger, but, fortunately, nobody died, although 12 were
hurt.

For Wednesday, May 1st,
weather experts issued a code yellow warning for strong wind in 18 counties in
the south and in Bucharest. Also, notifications were issued all across the
country, warning of bad weather in most regions. Heavy rain and storms were
reported over extended areas, as well as damaging wind and even hail. Another
two warnings for flood were issued for 21 counties in the north and west. Then,
on Thursday, a severe hail storm, quite unlikely to occur during this time of the
year, took by surprise drivers on Motorway 2, known as the Sun Motorway, which
links Bucharest to the Romanian Black Sea Coast. Authorities have promised that
the population will be warned about severe weather events by means of the
RO-ALERT system, which can be used as an app on smart phones, based on
information provided by meteorologists and 112 calls made by citizens.

Preparations for Pope Francis’ visit to Romania

The registration deadline for those
who want to take part in the mass performed by Pope Francis at the St. Josef
Roman Catholic Cathedral in Bucharest has been extended to May 15. The
announcement was made this week by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese, which said
that around 40,000 people will have access to the area around the cathedral in
the Romanian capital city. As many as 15 screens have been mounted, as well as
2 stages for a religious artistic performance.

Pope Francis will be on an apostolic
trip to Romania on May 31st to June 2nd. He will visit
Bucharest, the city of Iasi, the largest in the east of the country and home to
a sizable Roman Catholic community, Blaj, a town in the centre of the country
which is the spiritual capital of Romanian Greek Catholics, and where the Pope
will beatify 7 bishops killed in communist prisons, as well as the Marian
shrine in Sumuleu Ciuc, also in the centre, in a region with mostly Hungarian
population.

Hundreds of thousands of people,
including many foreign believers, have registered online to take part in the
masses that Pope Francis will be celebrating. He is the second Pontiff to visit
Romania, the first country with a majority Orthodox population to have ever
been visited by a Catholic Pope (John Paul II in 1999).

Easter holidays in Romania

Last Sunday’s Orthodox Easter was
followed by the International Workers’ Day, making it a good opportunity for
many Romanians to take a mini-holiday. A lot of them chose to go to the
Romanian Black Sea coast, where the summer season was officially opened on May
1. Festivals, car races and concerts were organised on this occasion. The
busiest resorts were, just like in previous years, Mamaia and Vama Veche. Other
destinations for the mini holiday were the mountain resorts in the Southern
Carpathians, the Danube Delta and the rural regions of Maramures, in the
north-west. Interior Ministry staff were mobilised in particular in the places
where major public events were held. Ambulance and firefighter units were also
on duty, to prevent incidents. And while most Romanians chose to spend their holiday
in the country, a large number of them went instead to Bulgaria, Greece, Turkey
and Egypt.