September 25, 2018 UPDATE

Romanias President, Klaus Iohannis, is attending in New York the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly/ PM Viorica Dăncilă is currently on a visit to Brussels

Newsroom, 25.09.2018, 18:50

UN GENERAL ASSEMBLY – UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, on Tuesday deplored what he called
an increasingly chaotic world order, in the opening speech of the annual UN
General Assembly session. Cooperation among states is increasingly difficult,
with severe divides within the Security Council, Antonio Guterres has
underlined. Attending are some 130 heads of state and government. Romania is
represented by president Klaus Iohannis. The theme of the general debate of the
73rd session of the UN General Assembly is Making the United Nations Relevant to All People: Global Leadership and Shared Responsibilities
for Peaceful, Equitable and Sustainable Societies. In his Wednesday
address during the general debates, Romanian President, Klaus Iohannis, will
underline the need for an efficient response to the main challenges to
international peace and security, concurrently with the need to identify the
root causes of these crisis-generating conflicts.

VISIT
– Romanian PM Viorica
Dăncilă is currently on a working visit to Brussels. On Wednesday, she will
have a series of talks with representatives of the political groups in the
European Parliament. The talks will include priorities on the European agenda,
relevant to Romania’s turn at the EU Council presidency. The PM will reiterate
Romania’s readiness to actively contribute to the process of reflecting on and
building Europe’s future.

HEARINGS– The Defence Committee of the Romanian
Senate on Tuesday held hearings on the August 10th protest in Bucharest. The hearings had been demanded
by the opposition in order to clarify the violent gendarme intervention. Among the people who were deposed were
Bucharest Prefect Speranta Cliseru, Interior Minister Carmen Dan, and the head
of the contingent of gendarmes deployed at the event, Laurentiu Cazan. Hundreds
of lawsuits have been filed by the people injured in the events of August 10.
On Friday, the head of the gendarmes corps and his deputy were indicted for the
violence that ensued at the protest. Recently, Interior Minister Carmen Dan
said that the forceful intervention of security forces was in response to a
threat to public order, and that the intervention was legal.

LAW – Romania’s Constitutional Court on Tuesday
rejected the notification sent by president Klaus Iohannis on the
unconstitutionality of the changes brought to the Law on the status of judges
and prosecutors. The head of state took the law to the Constitutional Court, considering
that it violates constitutional norms and principles, both in terms of the way
in which it had been debated and adopted, and in terms of its content. Now, the
draft law is to be promulgated by president Klaus Iohannis.

MOTION– The Chamber of Deputies on Tuesday debated a simple motion filed by
the National Liberal Party, in opposition, against the agriculture minister,
Petre Daea, whom they accused of incompetence in managing the African swine
fever crisis in Romania. The Liberals say they have resorted to this mechanism
after the ruling coalition made up of the Social Democratic Party and the
Alliance of Liberals and Democrats refused to set up a parliamentary committee
to investigate the way in which the Romanian line authorities intervened to
contain the epidemic. The simple motion will be voted upon on Wednesday. Since
the emergence of the first African swine fever outbreak in Romania, in late
July 2017, approximately 900 outbreaks have been confirmed, in several
counties.

MEETING
– Romania’s Prosecutor
General, Augustin Lazăr, on Tuesday met in
Bucharest with a delegation led by the Deputy Prosecutor General of neighbouring
Serbia, Miljko Radisavljevic. Augustin Lazăr has made an overall presentation
of the judiciary in Romania, and of the way the Public Ministry is organised,
detailing its activity and prerogatives. Other issues on the agenda of talks
included intellectual copyright and international judicial cooperation. The
visit was held as part of the project Fight Against Organised Crime in the Western
Balkans, organised by the Centre for International Legal Cooperation, based in
the Hague, in the Netherlands.

REP.
OF MOLDOVA – The
Speaker of the Moldovan Parliament, Andrian Candu, on Tuesday validated two new
ministers after having signed the necessary decrees instead of president Igor
Dodon. On Monday, the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Moldova decided
to temporarily suspend the prerogatives of the president, after he refused to
sign the decrees on the nomination of the new agriculture and health ministers
in the cabinet led by Pavel Filip. Dodon has
twice refused to sign the decrees, which runs counter to the Constitution. It
is for the fourth time that president Dodon gets suspended.

TENNIS – Romanian
tennis star Simona Halep, no.1 WTA, on Tuesday was defeated by
Slovakia’s Dominika Cibulkova in Wuhan, China, in a tournament with 2.7
million dollars in prize money. In the previous round, Cibulkova defeated
Romanian Monica Niculescu in two sets. (Translated by C. Cotoiu and D. Vijeu)