February 2, 2016

Romania paid off its IMF loan / Zika virus poses no threat to Romania at the moment

Newsroom, 02.02.2016, 12:00

The Romanian Senate’s legal comittee is today deciding whether to green light the prosecution of the former deputy prime minister and interior minister Gabriel Oprea. The Senator is accused of abusing the use of his official motorcade. The investigation was launched after last October a police officer had died while leading the motorcade accompanying the high-ranking official. Moreover, Gabriel Oprea had allegedly offered the same illegal benefit to the current Prosecutor General Tiberiu Nitu. Oprea claims he is innocent and says he wants to give up his right to parliamentary immunity.

The National Bank of Romania announced that it made the last interest payment of the 13 billion euro loan Romania took out from the International Monetary Fund in 2009. The payment marked the country’s completion of its IMF deals. The National Bank also announced that its hard currency reserves have dropped by half a billion euros this year as compared to 2015, to 31 billion euros at the beginning of this year. At the same time, Romania’s gold reserves have maintained at the level of 103 tons.

NATO stages naval military drills in the Black Sea waters this month, including military ships of Bulgaria, Romania, Spain and Turkey. Surveillance operations of the sea routes will be carried out in order to prevent illegal trafficking of goods and people. The exercise is part of the Romanian Navy’s work plan in 2016 and aims at raising the Romanian military interoperability level with Alliance partners.

Zika virus poses no threat to Romania at the moment but people who travel to Central and South America might be exposed to it, head of the Romanian Society of Microbiology, Alexandru Rafila, said on Tuesday. The World Health Organisation has declared that the clusters of brain-damaged babies born in Brazil — linked to but not proven to be caused by the Zika virus — constitute a public health emergency of international concern. The WHO director Margaret Chan called Zika “an extraordinary event and a public health threat to other parts of the world”. The infection has been linked to cases of microcephaly, in which babies are born with underdeveloped brains. The WHO, that puts Zika in the same category of concern as Ebola, made the announcement on Monday evening in Geneva. Currently, there is no vaccine or medication to stop Zika. In Europe and North America tens of cases if infection with the virus have been reported among people that have travelled to Latin America.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz has won the Iowa Republican caucuses with 28% of the votes, beating his rival, the frontrunner Donald Trump, and Marco Rubio. This is the first vote to choose US presidential candidates. Votes in the Democratic race are still being counted, with Hillary Clintons camp saying they have narrowly won. Hillary Clinton declared victory early Tuesday morning in a razor-thin contest against Bernie Sanders in Iowa. But Democratic Party officials have not yet declared a winner. The aim of the primary and caucus races in the coming months is to determine which candidates will represent the two main parties in the November presidential election. After Iowa, candidates are heading for New Hampshire for the primary elections due on February 9th.

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, is today unveiling a draft deal aimed at meeting David Camerons European Union reform demands, including new powers for national parliaments to block unwanted proposals from Brussels. Tusk held talks in London with the British Premier who insists on putting an “emergency brake” on welfare payments to EU workers. The latter also wants to impose a unilateral four-year curb, which other member states ruled out as discriminatory and in breach of the freedom of movement principle. Donald Tusk announced on Monday that progress was made in the talks with the British Premier. David Cameron has promised to renegotiate his country’s relation with the EU and then stage a referendum on whether to remain in the 28-member bloc.

(Translated by Elena Enache)