November 18, 2014

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Florentin Căpitănescu, 18.11.2014, 14:00

Romania’s Ambassador to the European Union Mihnea Motoc is the name put forward for the position of Foreign Affairs Minister, Prime Minister Victor Ponta has announced today. Former Foreign Affairs Minister Teodor Melescanu has today announced he was submitting his resignation against the backdrop of the scandal sparked by the flawed voting process for the Romanian Diaspora, in the second round of the presidential runoff. Melescanu has apologized to Romanian citizens from abroad who failed to cast their votes this past Sunday. Melescanu announced his ministry has taken special measures to unclog the voting process, among which providing extra staff for the polling stations and a supplementary number of voting stamps, also providing for the electronic download of the voting form. In another move, Melescanu criticized what he called the rigidity of the election legislation that ruled out the setting up of extra polling stations. Melescanu has also pleaded for the implementation of the electronic voting system as well as the correspondence voting. We recall Melescanu had taken over the Foreign Affairs Minister position last week, as his predecessor Titus Corlatean also handed in his resignation, on account of the voting difficulties the Romania Diaspora had in the first round of the presidential election on November 2nd. The second round of the presidential runoff saw a record turnout for the Romanian Diaspora, accounting for 380 thousand people or thereabouts, however, many of the Romanians abroad had to line up for hours of end at the polling stations, and some of them were unable to cast their vote before closing time. Large-scale protest rallies were staged in Romania, Bucharest included, in token of solidarity with the Romanian Diaspora.

The Chamber of Deputies in Bucharest will today be convening for a debate on the amnesty and pardon draft Law, almost one year after the draft law has been subject to debate. One day after he won the presidential election the mayor of the central Romanian town of Sibiu Klaus Johannis yesterday called on Parliament to abolish the amnesty and pardon Law, also approving for immunity to be lifted in the case of MPs who are currently under criminal investigation. Klaus Johannis’s former contender Prime Minister Victor Ponta stated the representatives of the ruling coalition made of the Social Democratic Party, the National Union for the Progress of Romania and the Conservative Party would cast their votes in favor for the amnesty draft Law to be abolished, as well as for parliamentary immunity to be lifted in the case of MPs who are currently under criminal investigation.

Governments of EU member states and the European Parliament have failed to reach consensus for the Union’s 2015 budget, given that this past Monday was the deadline for the agreement. According to the AFP the European Commission will have to come up with a new draft budget, standing at around 140 billion euro. Negotiations were at a deadlock as early as last week, because of major disagreements. The European Parliament will give its consent on condition that an agreement is reached on the budget rectification for 2013, with a debt waiver standing at around 30 billion euro, the AFP also stated.

Romania’s High Court of Cassation and Justice will today be giving its ruling in the file where the mayor of Sibiu Klaus Johannis was declared incompatible by the National Integrity Agency, We recall Johannis two days ago won the second round of the presidential runoff in Romania. The file reached Romania’s Supreme Court since the NIA made an appeal against the sentence issued by a local court, whose ruling was in favor of Johannis. In the aforementioned file, Romania’s Supreme Court has already given it s ruling in three hearings so far. In April 2013, the NIA made public the fact that the mayor of Sibiu Klaus Johannis was in a state of incompatibility, since he was also acting as municipal representative in shareholders’ boards of two companies in Sibiu. The law stipulates that the natural persons found incompatible are deprived of their right to be appointed or elected in a public position three years after the date when they have been dismissed from the public position or when their term in office ended.

German President Joachim Gauck has congratulated the winner of the second round of the presidential runoff in Romania, ethnic German Klaus Johannis. “You’re about to take over the presidential seat at a time of great challenge for Europe and implicitly for Romania” Deutsche Welle has quoted German President Gauck as stating. The German top-ranking official has also pledged Berlin would continue to support the reform process initiated by the authorities in Bucharest, especially with respect to the rule of law. Co-leader of Romania’s main opposition political group, the center-right Christian Liberal Alliance, Klaus Iohannis, the mayor of the central Romanian town of Sibiu has outclassed Social Democrat Prime Minister Victor Ponta, backed by the ruling coalition made of the Social Democratic Party, the National Union for the Progress of Romania and the Conservative Party. The Central Electoral Bureau announced Johannis got 54.50 per cent of the votes in favor, according to data coming from more than 99 per cent of the polling stations.

Romania’s national football team on home turf will tonight be taking on Denmark, in a friendly confrontation. Romania’s last scheduled fixture this year will be venue by the National Arena in Bucharest. We recall that on the same pitch last week Romania clinched a 2-nil win against Northern Ireland. For the preliminaries of Euro 2016, to be hosted by France, Romania top Group F table. The fixture against Northern Ireland coincided with the return of Anghel Iordanescu as national team manager. We recall that in the 1990s, with Iordanescu at the helm, the national team had the best run in its entire history, reaching as far as the World Championship quarterfinals in the United States in 1994.

Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry has expressed its regret for the death of Romanian-born French sociologist Serge Moscovoci known as the founder of modern social psychology and a theorist of ecology, a Foreign Affairs Ministry Press release has revealed. Born on June 1925 into a Jewish family in the south eastern town of Braila, Serge Moscovici had the experience of the anti-Semite trend in Romania before World War Two and that of the 1941 pogrom as for over a year he he was detained in a forced labor camp. Moscovci left Romania in 1948 and settled in France. He gave an account of his own life in “Chronicle of the lost years” (1997) a memoir dedicated to his son, who is the current European Commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Pierre Moscovici.