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| The Week in Review 30/01-05/02/2011 |
| (2011-02-04) |
| Last updated: 2011-02-07 15:21 EET |
This past week, delegates from the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the World Bank present in Bucharest continued their evaluation of the extent to which Romania has fulfilled obligations connected to its 20-billion-euro foreign financing agreement, signed in 2009.
Among the topics of discussion were financing Romania’s public debt in 2011, its foreign market loan strategy, as well as the taxation of high incomes and incomes from sources declared unknown. Romania’s representative within the IMF, Mihai Tanasescu, said the institution is not pushing for tax increases.
Talks were also held on restructuring state companies with record losses worth hundreds of millions of euros, and making the energy system more efficient.
Health Minister Cseke Attila has announced administrative changes in the Romanian health system, in order to improve conditions in hospitals and clinics and to make fund distribution more efficient. The measures include restructuring and creating mergers between more than 180 hospitals, thereby reducing the number of administrative sectors and reducing state budget expenses by nearly five million euros per year.
Cseke Attila: “A hospital should, first of all, provide constant and accessible care to patients, in as many medical fields as possible. Consider this possible situation: a patient has an internal disorder and goes to a hospital, where he only finds and ophthalmologist or a doctor specializing in ENT.”
Health unions are opposing this measure. They believe that layoffs would be fatal to the health system, given that thousands of doctors already choose to work in the west for more money and better conditions. The health minister is standing his ground and has set March 30th as a deadline for the local authorities to decide on measures to transform some healthcare units into retirement homes or offices for doctors specializing in family medicine.
On Thursday, in an extraordinary operation led by Romanian anti-corruption officers and prosecutors, dozens of customs officers and agents working at the Siret border checkpoint in northeastern Romania were arrested for bribe taking and cigarette smuggling. Surveillance began six months earlier, with the support of the Romanian Intelligence Service.
The operation was conducted as part of the efforts made by the authorities in Bucharest to convince reluctant EU members that Romania’s accession to the Schengen Area, scheduled for March, would not make the European space more vulnerable in matters of security.
France and Germany have asked for the postponement of Romania and Bulgaria’s accession, claiming the two are not yet ready to enter the free travel space. The main argument put forward by the two powers is insufficient progress in the judicial system and the fight against corruption.
Thousands of believers paid their last respects to Bartolomeu Anania, the metropolitan bishop of Cluj, Alba, Crisana and Maramures, one of the staunchest defenders of Orthodox faith and a promoter of Romanian spirituality. Bartolomeu died on the 31st of January at the age of 90 due to a heart problem and was buried at the Metropolitan Cathedral in Cluj Napoca in the hierarchs’ crypt.
The funeral, conducted by the Head of the Romanian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Daniel, was attended by representatives of the other religious denominations in Romania, as well as politicians. Valeriu Anania, as the metropolitan bishop was known before joining the church, completed his theological studies in Bucharest.
In 1958, he was sentenced to 25 years of forced labour and then released in 1964, when all anti-communist political prisoners were pardoned. He worked with the Romanian Orthodox Missionary Archbishopric in the United States and Canada in 1965 and became an archimandrite in 1967. In March 2006 the Holy Synod of the Romanian Orthodox Church granted him the rank of metropolitan bishop.
With 30% of the Danube bordering or running through the country, Romania will coordinate three priority areas as part of the European Union strategy for the Danube region: river transport, together with Austria, tourism and culture, together with Bulgaria, and the management of environmental risks generated by extreme phenomena, together with Hungary.
The European strategy is aimed at tapping the huge economic potential of the river, which is the second largest in Europe and crosses no less than 14 states, 8 of which are members of the European Union.
The authorities in Bucharest made public some of the Romanian projects which form part of this strategy, such as the construction of the Danube-Bucharest canal, building a fast-track train connection between Budapest, Bucharest and Constanta, streamlining the Danube ports and building two new ports and road bridges over the Danube between Romania and Bulgaria.
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