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| THE WEEK IN REVIEW 7-13/07/2008 |
| (2008-07-11) |
| Last updated: 2008-07-14 16:50 EET |
After five hours of tense negotiations, union leaders in Romania and the Prime Minister on Thursday agreed to meet next week again. The unionists are calling for an increase in the national minimum wage, from 500 to 540 lei or even 600 lei which is 170 euros roughly. And although 2008 is an election year, the government seems determined to firmly stand its ground. Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu:
“What I want to underline is that such a measure must be well-considered; it mustn’t be made under pressure, as Romania shouldn’t repeat the mistakes of the past, when uncontrolled pay rises sent the economy down on an inflation spiral mainly affecting the citizens’ purchasing power.”
In turn the government adopted a new list of subsidized medicine for insured individuals who can receive them free of charge or pay only part of their price. According to Prime Minister Tariceanu, since 2006, the price of medicine has gone down 26%, the new list has a considerably increased number of medicine subsidized. Here is health minister Eugen Nicolaescu with details:
“We have raised the number of subsidized medicine from position 119 up to 156. In the B list, where we have medicine subsidized by 50%, we have increased the number of positions from 148 to 216.”
The total financial effort rises up to three billion lei, 850 million euros roughly.
President Traian Basescu has twice lashed out at the Romanian legal system this past week. On the festive occasion devoted to Justice Day, the Romanian president said the day marked the ‘failure of justice’. And the report on justice to be presented in Brussels on July the 23rd stands good chances to get an extended monitoring period for Romania in this field. On Wednesday the Romanian president again referred to this possibility fingerpointing to some of the causes:
“There are prosecutors who, in their attempt to emulate James Bond, leak information from the files to the press. There is no room for these people in the legal system. There are situations when judges are connected with people from the underground world; prosecutors, policemen enjoy this type of relations, too.”
After more than two years, a Romanian foreign minister has visited the Republic of Moldova, an ex-soviet country with a majority Romanian-speaking population. However, after the discussions we can only conclude that the Romanian minister spoke Romanian and his Moldovan counterpart used his mother tongue without a translator! We recall the authorities in the neighboring Republic of Moldova say their mother tongue is Moldovan, in spite of having recently admitted the two are the same. At the end of the visit, Romanian foreign minister Lazar Comanescu urged his Moldovan counterpart Andrei Stratan.
“We should boost relations between small and medium-sized enterprises, to carry out joint projects and attract partners from other EU countries in projects linked to the preparation of the Republic of Moldova for its EU accession, in such fields as agriculture, infrastructure and energy security.”
The Moldovan minister said:
“We have agreed to continue discussions and dialogue to identify the solutions to the problems still pending and are convinced that we are going to accomplish that in the coming period.”
At the end of discussions journalists concluded that nothing had changed in the Moldovan-Romanian relations. Not even the announcement made by Chisinau on the possibility of opening some consulates isn’t new. Communist president Vladimir Voronin made a similar pledge but later changed his mind.
Romania will start a public diplomatic campaign to improve the image of the Romanian community in Italy and promote its interests in this country. Foreign Ministry spokesman Cosmin Boiangiu:
“The Foreign Ministry has acted constantly to make sure that the measures taken or envisaged by the Italian authorities regarding public safety and the census of people living in nomad camps fully comply with the rights stipulated by European law for EU citizens, therefore Romanian citizens as well.”
This statement was made after the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning Rome’s decision, seen as racist, to census and fingerprint the Roma living in Italy. While the Italian authorities strongly rejected the accusation of racism, the biggest Roma NGO in Romania went so far as to accuse them of fascism.
The Constitutional Court has ruled: Romanian radio and television channels will not be forced to air equal numbers of positive and negative news items. This had been stipulated in an absurd amendment to the law regulating the functioning of the National Council of the Audiovisual. The proposed amendment had been turned down by the Chamber of Deputies, but later enacted, unanimously, by the Senate. The amendment of the Audiovisual Act sparked fierce reactions as soon as it was endorsed by the Senate.
And the Prime Minister, Liberal Calin Popescu Tariceanu publicly requested President Traian Basescu not to promulgate the Senators' decision. But we don't know whether the Premier also disciplined his fellow Liberal, Deputy Ioan Ghişe, co-author of the controversial draft law.
We also don’t know whether the President disciplined the Liberal Democrats whom he unofficially controls and who voted without thinking. But we do know that they were the ones to run to the Constitutional Court to report the draft law as unconstitutional. And fortunately the Court has ruled: It is indeed unconstitutional.
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