April 29, 2023 UPDATE

UDMR – Deputy Prime Minister in the Romanian government, Kelemen Hunor, was re-elected, on Saturday, to the position of president of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania - UDMR, for a fourth term. At the Congress of the Union, which took place in Timisoara (west), he was the only candidate for that position. Of the 835 delegates attending, 653 voted for his re-election, seven votes were invalid, and the rest did not vote. Kelemen said that he wanted to keep UDMR in the government coalition with the Social Democratic Party - PSD and the Liberal Party – PNL. The liberal leader, the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă, and the Social Democrat leader and speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, Marcel Ciolacu, who attended the congress, expressed their support for continuing this partnership. Present, for 33 years, in all the post-communist Romanian Parliaments, since 1996 UDMR has been part of numerous coalition governments in Bucharest, either right-wing or left-wing.

Drugs - 11 people who were participating in a festival in the resort of Mamaia, on the Black Sea Coast (south-eastern Romania) are being investigated for drug trafficking, as various banned substances were found on them. According to the police, the 11 persons were caught red-handed while selling such substances. They also promoted the sale of drugs through messaging applications, specifying the prices for each type of drug. Six of the persons, foreign citizens, were held on remand for 30 days.

Handball – Romania’s men's national handball team meets, on Sunday evening, in Gummersbach, Germany, the Ukrainian national team, in its last match in Group 4 of the preliminaries of the European Men's Handball Championship - EHF EURO 2024. The hosts are the Ukrainians, who, after their country was invaded, last year, by the Russian troops, play their home matches abroad. In the same group, the match Austria – the Faroe Islands is also played. In the ranking, Austria is on first place, with 10 points, followed by Romania, 4 points (goal average +5), the Faroe Islands, 4 points (-5), and Ukraine, 2 points (-21). The top two ranking teams in the eight preliminary groups qualify for the final tournament, together with the four best teams on third place. The European Men's Handball Championship will take place in Germany, between January 10 and 28, 2024. World champion four times in the 1960-70s, Romania has not qualified for a European Championship since 1996, when it ranked 9th.

Book - Romania is attending the Leipzig Book Fair, in Germany, with over 150 new titles: fiction, children's literature and non-fiction, as well as numerous events hosted at the national stand, with the direct participation of famous writers, such as Gabriela Adameșteanu, Ioana Pârvulescu and Mircea Cărtărescu. The 2023 edition is enjoying great success, as the event has not been organized since 2019, due to the pandemic, and the public is particularly interested in meeting the world of books and their authors - writer Ioana Pârvulescu told Radio Romania.

Moldova - The Moldovan Foreign Ministry officials say they will not comment on what they call the absolutely unacceptable language used in their statements by some Russian officials, but announce that the ambassador of the Russian Federation to the Republic of Moldova (ex-Soviet republic with a majority Romanian-speaking population), Oleg Vasnetsov, will be summoned to the ministry to give explanations. The former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, today the vice-president of the Security Council in Moscow, said that the Republic of Moldova does not even exist as a state anymore, because "it was sold" to Romania. And the spokesman for the Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov, states that the Republic of Moldova is about to be "absorbed" by Romania. They made these statements after the Prime Minister of the Republic of Moldova, the pro-Western Dorin Recean, announced that several Russian officials, responsible for the invasion of neighboring Ukraine, including President Vladimir Putin, have been denied entry into Moldova. Created on part of the eastern Romanian territories annexed by Stalin’s Soviet Union, following an ultimatum, the Republic of Moldova proclaimed its independence from Moscow in 1991.

Veterans – The Romanian President Klaus Iohannis sent a message on the occasion of War Veterans Day, emphasizing that love of the country, belonging to the nation and courage guided their deeds of arms on the battlefield. Romania currently benefits from "the most solid security guarantees in history", and the unity and solidarity within NATO "increase the strength of the collective defense". The "substantial" presence of the allies on the national territory is proof thereof, the president added. "Romania owes its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity to the war veterans and it remembers their heroism" the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă also said. The PM stated, in his message, that it is an act of national conscience to honor the people on whose bravery Romania relied in difficult times for the entire world. (LS)