December 30, 2017

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Newsroom, 30.12.2017, 14:07

HANDBALL In the Swiss city of Winterthur, Romania’s national handball side is today taking on Serbia in a match counting towards the third and fourth positions of the Yellow Cup tournament. Switzerland will be playing Russia in the finals. On Friday, the Romanians conceded defeat to Russia 25 — 18, while Switzerland outperformed Serbia 32 — 28. At home our handballers are to go on a training camp for the upcoming Carpathian Trophy, a competition that is to bring together on January 5th the teams of Portugal, Tunisia and Bahrain. Under the guidance of Spanish headcoach, Xavi Pascual, Romania is preparing for the first round of the World Cup qualifiers in 2019; our handballers will travel to Bolzano in Italy and over January 11th and 13th they will play matches against the host country, Ukraine and the Feroe Islands. Only the winners in the six preliminary groups are allowed to join the play-offs in June for the final tournament in Germany and Denmark.

TENNIS Several tennis players from Romania are participating in the Shenzhen tournament in China with 700 thousand dollars in prize money. During the competition, which is due to kick off on December 31st, Romania’s Simona Halep will be taking on Nicole Gibbs of the USA in their first match so far. Irina Begu from Romania will be up against Chinese Fangzhou Liu, also in their first game. Mihaela Buzarnescu, who had an excellent season in 2017 climbing up 500 positions in the WTA standings, will be up against a redoubtable opponent, Maria Sharapova. This will also be their first game so far. Monica Niculescu, also from the Romanian delegation will play Aryna Sabalenka of Byelorussia. Another Romanian challenger, Ana Bogdan, is up against Camila Giorgi of Italy. The two met in 2017 also in Shenzhen in a match that went to the Italian player. In the first qualification round on Saturday, Irina Bara of Romania conceded defeat to Stefanie Voegele of Switzerland. Halep is the odds-on favourite of the tournament, which she also won in 2015. The Romanian needs this title if she wants to remain number 1 in the world rankings.

RESHUFFLE Liviu Dragnea, the head of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), the main party of the leftist ruling coalition, has announced that next month he will discuss with their partners, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) about a possible government reshuffle. Dragnea has pointed out that personally, he is satisfied with the activity of the ministers and of PM Mihai Tudose. The Social Democratic leader has also said that he is against an extraordinary parliament session summoned to discuss amendments to the Criminal Codes, and he also opposes the issuing of an emergency decree on this matter. He believes that these bills must also be passed following debates, but emphasises the fact that by April 2018 the EU directive regarding the presumption of innocence and the right to fair trial must be included into the Romanian law. Other amendments to the Criminal Codes are generated by rulings of the Romanian Constitutional Court and European Court of Human Rights. The right-of-center opposition, civil society and the media are harshly criticising the government coalition’s plan to amend the justice laws, and accuse them of trying to subordinate magistrates and put an end to the battle against corruption. Last week, embassies of seven EU member states called on all parties involved in the reform process of the Romanian justice system to avoid any action that might compromise the independence of the judicial system.

OPINION POLL 75% of Romanians believe that things are going the wrong way, according to an opinion poll run by the Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy. Only 17% of respondents are content with the way in which the country is going. 7% believe that things are going neither in the right, nor the wrong way, 2% said they do not know. 40% of Romanians said they were not quite content with the way things are going, 36% said they were quite content, 19% said they were unhappy with the way things are going, 4% said they were very happy, with 1% saying they could not tell or not answering at all. 45% are of the opinion that 2017 was worse than 2016, 30% said it was the same, 24% said it was better, with a 1% undecided option. The most important events of the year are considered the death of King Michael I, on 5 December, the anti-government protests of January and February, with 8 percentage points each. In terms of confidence, Romanians trust the EU the most, 38%, their mayor, 31%, and the media, 31%, with the lowest confidence figures going towards Parliament, 11%, and political parties, 8%. They also believe that Romania should have a better relationship with Germany, 64%, and with the US 57%. The poll ran between December 6 and 8, and has a margin of error of 2.5%.