December 14, 2022 UPDATE

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România Internațional, 14.12.2022, 19:52

BUDGET The 2023 state budget was endorsed by Parliament in Bucharest in
joint sitting with 251 votes in favour and 115 against. The representatives of
the PSD-PNL-UDMR majority imposed an alert pace of debates in the specialized committees
and in the joint sitting and the document made it to the final voting in just
three days. After its endorsement in the Legislature, Prime Minister Nicolae
Ciuca says that it is for the first time when Romania has the budget for the
next year in the first half of December. Ciuca has given assurances that it is
a realistic and balanced budget. The opposition has criticized the document,
which it deems as lacking vision adding that the incomes are overestimated.

REVOLUTION
On Wednesday in Timisoara,
western Romania, events started for the 33rd anniversary of the
anti-communist revolution of 1989. The Revolution Memorial Museum hosted an
exhibition in partnership with the Horrors of Communism Museum, while several
schools will be screening short films about the Revolution. Moments of silence
and marches in memory of the martyrs are scheduled for December 16, as well as
a concert called Folk for the Revolution. The day of December 17 will be a day
of mourning in Timisoara, in memory of those who sacrificed their lives for
freedom. Manifestations will wrap up on December 20, with a video mapping show
with images from the revolution beamed onto the facade of the opera building.
We recall that the uprising against the regime led by dictator Nicolae
Ceausescu erupted on December 16, 1989 in Timisoara, spreading on December 21
in Bucharest and other major cities across the country. Overall, over 1,000
people lost their lives and about 3,000 were injured in the combat that ensued
in Romania, the only country in Eastern Europe where the change of regime
involved violence.

VISIT The
president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, is attending the meeting of the EU heads
of state in Brussels on Thursday. High on the agenda are the situation in
Ukraine and the headway made in the field of energy. Iohannis, who had also
attended the EU-ASEAN summit in Brussels, said he would put on the European
Council’s agenda the issue of Romania’s Schengen accession although the next
vote on this is expected to be only in the upcoming Council of Justice and Home
Affairs. The only way to solve the issue of Romania’s Schengen accession is
diplomacy, Iohannis went on to say. The head of the Romanian state said that
Romania’s accession to Europe’s border-free area can be possible next year. We
recall that Austria opposed Romania and Bulgaria’s Schengen accession in the
last week’s session of the aforementioned council.

(bill)