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| The Week in Review 23/04/2011 |
| (2011-04-22) |
| Last updated: 2011-04-27 14:54 EET |
The opposition in Romania referred the bill on the social dialogue code and another on teacher salaries in 2011 to the Constitutional Court. The government earlier called for a vote of confidence in Parliament on the two bills. However, the parliamentary groups of the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party, in opposition, have criticised the government for trying to evade Parliament in the way it handled the passing of the two bills. In its defence, the government says without the teacher salaries law the budget effort would increase by 500 million euros and the budget deficit target would be missed. The Liberals say this is the 13th time the government seeks a vote of confidence in Parliament on its bills, which they describe as something “beyond any acceptable limit in a democratic state”, bordering on the absurd.
Prime Minister Emil Boc has taken over the labour portfolio as the post remained vacant following the resignation of Ioan Botis over his wife’s involvement in a European Union-funded project. The funds were allocated through the very ministry run by Botis. Following intense media coverage of the case, the National Integrity Agency has started an investigation into allegations of a conflict of interests.
This is a busy time for the Romanian judiciary. The former director of the Romanian Railways Company, Mihai Necolaiciuc, was extradited and appeared before Romanian judges 6 years after he fled to the United States. He is accused of several crimes, including abuse of office, which caused the state to lose tens of million of euros. Nicolae Popa was also extradited this week from Indonesia. He is held responsible for the collapse of a nation-wide pyramid scheme as a result of which the Romanian state, as guarantor, was forced to pay over 100 million euros to the people who lost their money in this scheme. The businessman Sorin Ovidiu Vantu, who is considered to be the mastermind of the scheme, was also detained for 24 hours, but in a different case. According to investigators, Vantu, who is one the wealthiest and most controversial businesspeople in Romania, allegedly blackmailed and made death threats against the manager of his own media trust, Sebastian Ghita. The prosecutors’ case against Vantu is based on incriminating recorded telephone conversations. Another businessman, Dinel Staicu, who received a 7-year prison sentence over the embezzlement of the International Bank of Religions, was arrested earlier this week in Hungary. He fled the country at the beginning of the month, but was eventually tracked down by the Interpol.
Claude Gueant, the French interior minister, and Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister were both in Bucharest this week for talks with the Romanian authorities. France said it was willing to help Romania join the Schengen area, something initially scheduled for March. Romania’s entry was, however, postponed because of the reticence of several Schengen states, including France itself. In a separate event, the meeting between Iraq’s foreign minister and his Romanian counterpart Teodor Baconschi tackled mainly economic issues. The conclusions of the talks are that Bucharest will support Baghdad in its dialogue with the European Union, while Romanian businesspeople are welcome to invest in Iraq.
President Traian Basescu paid an official visit to Jordan, where he discussed with King Abdullah II about the bilateral cooperation and the situation in the Middle East and North Africa. The two heads of state agreed to consolidate their countries’ partnership in areas such as energy, transport, agriculture, tourism, investment and trade. Before Jordan, president Basescu travelled to Azerbaijan, where he signed, together with president Ilham Aliev, a joint action plan for a strategic partnership between the two states.
Italy thanked Romania for offering to host temporarily 200 North African immigrants who are currently on Italian territory. The offer to receive immigrants was made recently by president Traian Basescu to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlosconi. On Wednesday, 30 Eritrean immigrants who had fled from Libya to Tunisia arrived at the Transit Centre in Timisoara, in western Romania.
The Cluj Napoca Theatre and the Sibiu Theatre were the main winners of the Romanian Theatre Union Awards, known as the UNITER awards. The production “Screams and Whispers” staged by Andrei Serban at the Hungarian State Theatre in Cluj Napoca received the award for best director, best performance and best leading actor, which went to Zsolt Bogdan. The UNITER award for best leading actress went to Ofelia Popii for her role in the production “Slices” staged by the Radu Stanca Theatre in Sibiu. The award for best radio theatre play went to “Carnival Scenes” produced by the Romanian Radio Broadcasting Corporation.
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