July 27, 2015 UPDATE
Click here for a roundup of news from Romania and abroad
România Internațional, 27.07.2015, 12:14
The Romanian government is preparing the first budget rectification for 2015, which is going to be a positive one. The project was presented on Monday to the leaders of the Social Democrats (in the ruling coalition). Following the rectification substantial sums of money will be channeled to the Ministries of Interior, Defense, Finance, Education, Environment and to the Special Telecommunications Service. The Labor Ministry will also receive additional money to pay augmented child allowances, pensions and other benefits. In exchange, the budgets of the ministries of health, culture, energy, transports, European funds and foreign affairs will be cut. In another development, the interim president of the Social Democratic Party, Liviu Dragnea, said the new Fiscal Code would be debated in Parliament in an extraordinary session at the end of August, and the finance minister, Eugen Teodorovici, would take into account the president’s request for re-examination and would look once again with the national bank representatives into the sustainability of such a code. On July 17th President Klaus Iohannis rejected the new fiscal code and sent it back to Parliament on grounds that its application might cause serious economic imbalances. The Liberal opposition announced they wanted a technical debate of the Fiscal Code before the vote in Parliament.
The weather remains extremely hot in the south and south east of Romania, where maximum temperatures are soaring to 37 degrees Celsius. Meteorologists have issued a code yellow alert for extremely high temperatures in the affected regions. In the following days highs are expected to go up to 38-39 degrees. In the rest of the territory, temperatures will be ranging between 26 and 34 degrees Celsius and the sky is overcast. Isolated thunderstorms are expected in some regions.
Human trafficking is a problem still affecting Romania and efforts are being made to toughen the legislation, shows the annual report on human trafficking made public on Monday by the US Department of State. According to the report, Romania is a source, transit and destination country for the victims of forced labor trafficking as well as for the women and children who are victims of sex trafficking. Recommendations for the Romanian authorities refer to allotting public funds for NGOs and for new shelters for the victims of human trafficking, for improving access to medical services, increasing the quality of psychological counseling, investigating and convicting traffickers as well as the officials who are their accomplices. The report also shows that in Romania in 2014 the number of human traffickers sentenced to prison increased as compared to 2013.
The representatives of Greece’s international creditors, the EU and the IMF, are in Athens for talks with the Greek authorities on providing a 3rd financial aid program. The announcement was made on Monday by Mina Andreeva, a spokeswoman for the European Commission. The international creditors’ representatives have returned to Athens after, in the past two weeks, the Greek Parliament has approved two sets of measures agreed upon on July 13th with the European leaders for the continuation of negotiations on the new financial aid scheme worth 86 billion euros. The measures targeted, among others, the reform of the pension system, the VAT increase, the curbing of public expenditure, introducing European banking regulations into the Greek legislation, and the modernization of the civil procedure code. The IMF team has been headed since last Tuesday by Romanian Delia Velculescu, an economist and the co-author of an IMF analysis regarding the Greek economy.
During the festival in Salzburg Romanian writer Mircea Cartarescu was awarded the Austrian state prize for European Literature in 2015 for his entire literary activity, which has compelled international recognition. After Eugen Ionesco, who reaped the prize in 1970, Mircea Cartarescu has become the second Romanian writer to win this prize, which was founded in 1965. Among the winners of the past years there are famous writers such as Harold Pinter, Vaclav Havel, Italo Calvino, Doris Lessing, Milan Kundera, Salman Rushdie and Umberto Eco.
The swimmer Claudia Maria Gadea on Monday brought the first gold medal for Romania at the European Youth Olympic Festival held in Tbilisi in the 400 m individual medley event. A total number of 66 Romanian athletes are competing in 6 of the 9 sports included in the competition program: athletics, judo, gymnastics, swimming, women’s handball and tennis. For the first time in the history of this contest, in which more than 3,800 athletes from 50 countries are participating, competitions will run for 6 days, not 5 days as in the previous editions.
