Attending the Luxembourg proceedings of the General Affairs and External Relations Council, EU foreign ministers have called on the communist authorities in the Republic of Moldova ( a former Soviet republic, with a predominantly Romanian-speaking population) to provide the Union’s citizens with an equal treatment regarding the visa policy. The appeal was made in the wake of Khishinew instating mandatory visas in April for citizens of neighboring Romania. We recall Khishinew accused Bucharest of having tried to destabilize the Republic of Moldova; but the accusations proved groundless. Romanian Foreign Minister Cristian Diaconescu said the EU also demanded from Khishinew an investigation of the events that followed the April the 5th elections when police savagely repressed the anticommunist protests.

The National Employment Agency in Romania has announced that in May the unemployment rate reached 5.8%, by two percent higher than in May last year. Also a survey compiled by the consultancy company GfK Romania says that the incomes of 40% of Romanians went down in the first months of the year, especially as bonuses and incentives disappeared. Nine percent of the employees had to face delayed salary payments, while the number of those who can barely make ends meet is growing, reaching 60%. Utility providers lay the blame for all that on the financial deadlock. Bankers fear that in autumn , credits that are not of high performance may reach the highest level. In turn, meteorologists forecast droughty summer, with devastating effects especially on the country’s southern farmlands, and with unavoidable consequences on the GDP, to which the contribution of agriculture will again be slim. Eventually, macro-economic pointers have persuaded otherwise optimistic President Basescu that Romania’s economy is facing recession. The only good side of the economic downturn might be a drop in the methane gas demand, which has also triggered a slight decrease in its price.

Bombarded with bad news, the Romanian government is trying to parry, making economic and social innovations. The Executive has cancelled over one hundred taxes and fiscal tariffs, has decided to compensate the farmers’ debts from the state budget and has adopted the methodological norms of implementing the “First House” programme. People who do not have a dwelling as a private or shared property and who did not contract a mortgage loan can benefit from the programme. They must give a down payment of at least 5% of the price of an apartment of 60,000 Euros at the most. The loans given by banks under that programme will be guaranteed by the state, which thus tries to unblock both crediting and the real estate market, equally paralysed by the crisis.

19 years after the so-called miners’ raid in Bucharest on June 13th-15th 1990, the then leftist president, Ion Iliescu and his main servants have been definitively exonerated by the court ruling. None of the prosecutors’ counts, from aiding and abetting to torture to undermining the state power has been taken into consideration by the court, although Bucharesters believe that Iliescu is the one to have called the miners in the Jiu Valley-central-South-Western Romania to the capital to repress an alleged far right coup d’etat. Their raid left at least six dead, over 700 wounded, thousands of people being abusively detained and maltreated and the devastation of the University, of opposition parties and independent papers.

More tense than ever before, the domestic football season ended with the final of Romania’s Cup, won by CFR Cluj( in the North-West), that defeated FC Timisoara( in the West) 3-0. Both clubs had already qualified for the European cups. Vicechampion FC Timisoara will play in the qualifiers of the Champions’ League and CFR Cluj will play in the newly-established Europe League, where they will be joined by Dinamo Bucharest, Steaua Bucharest and FC Vaslui (in the East). The new national champion is for the first time Unirea Urziceni (in the South), that qualified directly for the Champions’ League.