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| The Week in Review |
| (2012-02-04) |
| Last updated: 2012-02-06 12:11 EET |
On the rundown:
Extreme weather still afflicts Romania
The population of Romania is dropping
Romania joined 24 EU member states in agreeing on a new European budget treaty
A delegation of international lenders is in Bucharest
The Social Liberal Union in Romania went on parliamentary strike
And former Social Democrat Prime Minister Adrian Nastase is sentenced to two years in prison for corruption
Extreme weather still afflicts Romania
Romania is still under alert level yellow for snow, blizzard and sleet, which is now announced to be in place until Sunday. Previously, an alert level orange had been issued until Friday, and the country had to come to grips with temperatures as low as –33 degrees Celsius. Over 20 people have died so far, and hundreds of homeless persons have been hosted in shelters. Road and railroad traffic has been severely disrupted, and flights have been cancelled or delayed. Hundreds of schools have suspended their activity.
The population of Romania is dropping
Early tentative figures have been returned after the general census conducted in Romania last October and made public on Thursday by the National Statistics Institute. They show that the population of the country has dropped by over 2 million people over the last 9 years. Romania’s stable population is now around 19 million people, of whom 660,000 were temporarily absent during the census. The data reveal that Romania has over 7 million households, 8.5 million homes, and over 5 million buildings. Of the total stable population of Romania, over 10 million people reside in cities, meaning 52%. As for the ethnic makeup of the population, the provisional figures show that 88.6% of the stable population said they were Romanians. Ethnic Hungarians account for 6.5% of the country’s population, while 620,000 people reported they were ethnic Rroma, accounting for 3.2% of the population.
Romania joined 24 EU member states in agreeing on a new European budget treaty
On Monday, President Traian Basescu attended the European Council in Brussels, where 25 of the 27 EU member countries, including Romania, agreed on a new European treaty meant to improve budgetary discipline in member states. The UK and the Czech Republic rejected the fiscal pact, which is meant to prevent future sovereign debt crises. The document is to be signed in early March, and will come into force after being ratified by at least 12 states. Romania is among the countries that have to amend their constitution by the end of 2013 in order to be in compliance with the pact. Considered a necessary step for the credibility of Europe in combating the crisis, the treaty provides for each state to have a correction mechanism in place in case that country cannot keep below the ceiling of 0.5% of the GDP structural deficit set by the treaty. Also, national budgets will be supervised at the European level, and states that run excessive debts will be automatically penalized.
A delegation of international lenders is in Bucharest
A joint delegation of international lenders, from the IMF, the World Bank and the EU, is in Bucharest until February 6th, in order to run their fourth evaluation of Romania’s compliance with the terms of the stand by agreement signed a year ago, worth 5.4 billion Euros. In exchange for this money, the Romanian government committed to taking measures to increase its economic performance. Early this week, Prime Minister Emil Boc did not rule out a slight increase in public sector wages that had been cut and in pensions, but then he made it clear that the priority was to ensure economic stability. The National Union for the Progress of Romania, a coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, submitted to the delegation of creditors a draft graph for recovering the money lost by public employees. The opposition was quite reticent of the announcements made by the governing parties regarding the possibility of boosting pensions and public salaries. Social Democrat Party president Victor Ponta recalled that the law did not allow for salary or pension raises during an election year.
The Social Liberal Union in Romania went on parliamentary strike
The Social Liberal Union MPs decided to stop attending regular sessions of Parliament, such as Permanent Bureau, committee and plenary sessions, and just attend major meetings for decisions such as early elections, censure motions or impeaching the president. The Union announced that that was done in protest towards what they called the ruling coalition’s abusive practice of passing laws by confidence vote, claiming that that was an act of suppressing parliamentary debates on topics of national interest. The parliamentary strike comes against the backdrop of street protests against the government and the presidency, which started 3 weeks ago. The ruling coalition MPs deem the move of the opposition as irresponsible.
Former Social Democrat Prime Minister Adrian Nastase is sentenced to two years in prison for corruption
Former Social Democrat PM Adrian Nastase was sentenced to two years in prison without the possibility of suspension for acts of corruption. The ruling, which can still be appealed, was made in a case of election campaign fundraising in 2004, when Nastase ran for president of the country. The prosecution claimed that the 1.6 million Euros gathered by participation fees in the ‘Trophy of Quality in Construction’ competition were used in that campaign. The former prime minister denied the charges, and said that that was a political trial, and an act of revenge on the part of president Traian Basescu, who won the election in 2004. At the end of last year, Adrian Nastase was acquitted in a case of bribery. In another case on the Supreme Court’s roll, the Social Democrat leader is charged with bribery and blackmail.
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