May 8, 2023

Click here for a roundup of domestic and international news

Newsroom, 08.05.2023, 14:40

LONDON Thousands of street parties are
going to take place today in Britain to mark the coronation of King Charles
lll. The country’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was among those hosting a
coronation lunch with the guests including Ukrainian families, youth groups and
US first lady Jill Biden. Churches and local communities are going to stage events
devoted to this occasion in public gardens and parks. A special concert to be
held at Windsor Castle will bring together artists like Lionel Richie, Katy
Perry or the band Take That. Thousands of public buildings will see lasers and light
projections to celebrate the coronation tonight. King Charles and Queen Camilla
have conveyed a message of gratitude for the support shown by the Britons
during the coronation procedures.

ORDINANCE An emergency ordinance on curbing public spending is to be endorsed
by the government in Bucharest this week after being assessed by the ruling
coalition, Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca has announced. Finance
Minister Adrian Câciu is expected to present today the coalition leaders with
the concrete measures on cutting budget expenses, which also include hiring
freeze in state institutions after May 15th. In another development,
the head of the Executive says that no increased taxes will be levied on private
sector employees. And the same public message was delivered by the leader of
the co-ruling PSD, Marcel Ciolacu who added that he doesn’t give up on the
measure of cutting special pensions. The law will be subjected to public
debates and be approved by the Executive later on.

CYBERSECURITY As of this week Bucharest will be hosting the headquarters of a
major EU agency, the European Centre for Cyber Security, which is to protect
the economy and population from cyber attacks, support research in this field
and help European enterprises to develop their cyber-security capabilities. The
aforementioned agency will be cooperating with a network of national centers in
the EU countries. Romania’s Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Roberto Viola, Director-General
of the European Commission’s Department for Communications Networks, will be
attending the inauguration event. In December 2020, EU representatives chose Romania
to host the aforementioned center among the other applicants like Belgium,
Germany, Spain, Luxembourg, Poland and Lithuania. Bucharest’s trump cards
included the high-speed Internet it uses, the centre’s exemption from various
taxes and duties and the fact that this city hadn’t hosted any European agency
until that time.

SUBSIDIES
Romania’s Agriculture
Minister Petre Daea says that the greengrocers who are still using toxic
substances will have their subsidies cut. The statement came upon an
investigation which proved that many farmers put on sale vegetables, which had
been sprinkled with toxic substances with a concentration up to 8 times higher than
the limit approved. The minister says the authorities will be monitoring the
farmers benefitting from support through national programmes for the greenhouse
cultivation of vegetables so that no more non-compliant vegetables may reach
the market. The police have conducted many searches in the counties of Buzau
and Ilfov, in southern Romania, where they found hundreds of containers with
chemical substances from Turkey whose concentrations proved to be higher than
those admitted by the EU legislation. The greengrocers used these substances to
ripen vegetables faster and sell them on the market for higher prices. According
to police sources, in some cases these toxic vegetables were sold as organic products.

(bill)