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| The Week in Review 26/02/2011 |
| (2011-02-26) |
| Last updated: 2011-02-28 11:16 EET |
Romania is maintaining its position with a view to separating its Schengen accession slated for March from the assessment reports in the field of the judiciary. Earlier this week, Romanian president Traian Basescu said that the Verification and Cooperation Mechanism set up by the European Union upon Romania’s EU accession has nothing to do with the country’s efforts to join Schengen, but with technical accession criteria specified in the treaty and that Romania has met. EU ministers of the interior on Thursday met in Brussels to evaluate the extent to which Romania and Bulgaria are ready to join the Schengen space.
Following the talks, the Romanian Minister of the Interior Traian Igas said that all member states admitted that Bucharest has fully complied with the target criteria: “Of course there is an interest on behalf of some states regarding illegal immigration from the Balkan area, from Turkey, or the Asian states more recently. However, this should by no means prevent Romania from joining Schengen within a reasonable time limit”.
Romanian PM Emil Boc on Thursday argued in favour of a fair assessment of Romania’s dossier, upon talks with the European Council President Herman van Rompuy in Bucharest. The EU official noted that Romania has done everything in order to ensure the security of its borders, and that Schengen enlargement continues to rank high on the agenda of the Hungarian presidency of the EU. In addition, Herman von Rompuy saluted efforts on the Romanian side to overcome the financial downturn, saying that “the vigorous implementation of the common program with the EU and the IMF” has ensured the stability of the economy and consolidated public finances.
The ruling coalition parties in Romania have decided that next week, the government will assume responsibility for the new Labor Code which involves a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The code has been contested by trade unions, which are threatening to begin street protests, as well as by the opposition, which has put forward the idea of a motion of censure. According to the Prime Minister, who made the announcement, the new Labor Code will make the labor market more flexible and will create more jobs. The new elements introduced in the project include the regulation of collective work agreements through a special law, as well as the extension of the contracted employment period and fines for employers who use black-market workers. Prime minister Boc claims that the new Code is necessary because, since 2003, when the previous law was adopted, changes taken place, and the country’s EU accession as well as the application of directives relating to work legislation have brought to light problems in Romania, regarding the legal workplace framework.
The governor of the National Bank of Romania Mugur Isarescu has warned that work, rather than consumption must be stimulated in Romania. He drew attention to the fact that the economic development of post-Communist Romania over the last two decades has relied on loans and consumption and is not viable from a social, political and economic point of view.
According to the head of the National Bank, labor can only be stimulated by encouraging investment that create new jobs, boosting productivity, increasing flexibility on the labor market and, more importantly, by reducing the social fiscal burden. Finance Minister Gheorghe Ialomitianu has announced that the Government is looking to cut social security contributions, most notably at company level. He added that banks need to show more courage and contribute to financing the real economy.
Anticorruption operations carried out at Romanian border checkpoints continued throughout this week, with more than 150 customs agents and border police officers detained on charges of bribe taking. Since the beginning of February, operations have targeted checkpoints in the north, on the Ukrainian border, in the southwest, on the border with Serbia, and more recently, at the Albita checkpoint, the busiest crossing between Romania and the Republic of Moldova. Facing charges of bribe taking and aiding a criminal group focusing on cigarette smuggling, most customs officers at the Albita checkpoint were placed under 29-day temporary arrest by the Bucharest Court of Appeal. On Thursday, the head of the Ploiesti customs office in southern Romania was also taken into custody for 29 days, on charges of repeated bribe taking and accessory to forgery. Anticorruption prosecutors caught the suspect in the act of receiving money from a businessman through a go-between. The latest figures released by the National Anticorruption Directorate count 840 final sentences handed out by its prosecutors between 2005 and 2010.
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