February 19, 2020 UPDATE

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Newsroom, 19.02.2020, 20:24

MEETING As of Thursday Romania’s
president Klaus Iohannis will be participating in a special meeting of the
European Council in Brussels, which will have high on its agenda the EU Multiannual
Financial Framework for the period between 2021 and 2027. According to a communiqué
released by the presidential administration in Bucharest, Iohannis will be
pleading for the appropriate funding of the Cohesion Policy and the Common
Agricultural Policy underlining the fact that Romania must benefit from
significant funds for these two policies as instruments meant to reduce
development gaps between member states. Iohannis is also expected to support
the importance of assuring flexible and simplified implementation conditions to
ease access to the European funds. Statements by several European leaders on
Wednesday suggest that negotiations over the EU’s Multiannual budget, the first
after Brexit, are going to be tough and complicated.

GOVERNMENT Interviews in the Romanian Parliament with the ministers proposed
to form the second cabinet led by Ludovic Orban ended on Wednesday after three
days of debates in the specialized committees. Only four ministers in the
fields of Defence, Agriculture, Economy and Foreign Affairs out of the 16
interviewed have got endorsement. Parliament is expected to vote on the new cabinet
on February 24th. Prime Minister Orban decided to maintain the same
government as he was pleased with their activity. The National Liberal Party’s intention
is to have two governments turned down, which could lead to a dissolution of
Parliament and snap election. These elections could be held between June 15th
-30th concurrently with the local elections. On Wednesday, the
Senate in Bucharest turned down the government’s emergency ordinance on staging
early elections.

TENNIS The world’s no.2 tennis player Simona Halep of Romania on
Wednesday outperformed Ons Jabeur of Tunisia in the second round of the Dubai
tennis tournament and qualified for the competition’s quarterfinals where the Romanian
is expected to take on Arina Sabalenka of Belarus. We recall that Halep won the
tournament in 2015 and last year was eliminated in the quarter finals by
Belinda Bencic of Switzerland.

BRANCUSI Romania on Wednesday marked 144 years since the birth of its famous
sculptor Constantin Brancusi, with special events staged in capital city
Bucharest and Targu Jiu, the city hosting the Sculptural Ensemble of Constantin
Brancusi. In Targu Jiu, the Constantin Brancusi National Museum was inaugurated
to include works such as The Table of Silence, The Gate of the Kiss and the
Endless Column. Also, Romania’s National Museum of Art is hosting a high-tech
projection show where the public will be able to watch holograms of the
sculptor and his famous works. Known as the
father of modern sculpture, Brancusi, born on February 19, 1876, in Hobita, a
small village in southern Romania, was one of the most influential sculptors of
the 20th century as well as a painter and photographer. Brancusi willed
to the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris an important number of works and
everything his workshop contained, on condition that the workshop itself be
moved to the museum and restored to its original condition. Part of this gift
included hundreds of photographic prints he took, beginning in the 1920s, of
his work and studio. He had initially offered all of them to the Romanian
state, but the communist government of the 1950s refused the gift.

(translated by bill)