Romanian president Traian Băsescu attended the summit on nuclear security in Seoul. At a time when the risks and benefits of nuclear energy are under new scrutiny, the Romanian president reaffirmed that security in the field remains an extremely important issue for his country. Romania actually counts among the 32 nations with materials that can fuel atomic bombs. The country’s only nuclear powerplant, the one in Cernavoda (in the South-East) provides almost 20% of domestic energy consumption. Experts say that this percentage means Romania is a nuclear energy-dependent country.

Romanian MPs involved in legal cases.

Romanian deputy Mihail Boldea, who had been issued an international arrest warrant, has been repatriated. The High Court of Casstion and Justice in Bucharest confirmed he will be under arrest for 29 days. Boldea had previously been charged with heading an organised crime and fraud network, working in the field of real estate. He turned himself in at the Romanian consulate in Nairobi. Prosecutors claim that damages stand at more than one million euros. In another move, a first for the Romanian judiciary, MP Virgil Pop was handed a definitive 5-year sentence. He had used his influence to grant public contracts to a private company in the central Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca.

The main party of the ruling coalition is dealt a heavy blow.

Senior deputy president of the Liberal Democratic Party Sorin Frunzaverde, has left the group and will run for the June local elections on the Opposition’s Social Liberal Union ticket. A founding member of the Liberal Democratic Party and viewed as its second most important figure, Frunzăverde will run for the presidency of the Caras Severin County Council (in the South-East of Romania). The Liberal Democratic Party faced another blow when chairman of the Olt Valley party branch, Darius Valcov, handed in his resignation. As a result, Valcov lost his position as mayor of Slatina.

Lustration Law is ruled unconstitutional.

The Romanian authorities have again had a belated and questionable reaction with respect to decisions regarding the fall of the former Communist regime. For the second time, the Constitutional Court Awaited ruled the Lustration law as being unconstitutional, a piece of legislation that has been eagerly awaited for 22 years. It was passed by Parliament last month, when the opposition parties were on strike. The law stipulated that politicians who were part of the Communist regime’s power structures and its repressive apparatus will have temporarily limited access to certain functions and public capacities. The Court cited a provision that also deemed former Communist prosecutors as subject to lustration.

The head of Romanian diplomacy visits Rome.

The Romanian foreign minister, Cristian Diaconescu, held discussions in Rome with his Italian counterpart Giulio Terzi di Sant’ Agata and with the minister of European affairs Enzo Moavero Milanesi. High on the agenda was the strategic bilateral partnership, as well as Romania’s accession to the Schengen zone. Diaconescu has also met representatives of the Romanian community in Italy, which presently stands at one million people.

Romanian-Russian talks over the anti-missile shield in Europe.

Romania wants NATO and Russia to reach a common decision concerning the anti-missile shield in Europe. That was the message conveyed by Romanian state secretary with the Foreign Ministry, Bogdan Aurescu, during his visit to Moscow. After discussions with Russian officials, the Romanian state secretary said the two sides would continue bilateral consultations over Trandniester, a sensitive issue in the region. Transdniester, a pro-Russian region in the east of the Republic of Moldova, a former soviet country with a Romanian-speaking majority, broke free from Chisinau’s control in the early 90s following an armed conflict, which ended after the deployment of Russian troops to the region.

A controversial decision in academia.

The government in Bucharest has approved tuition in Hungarian and English at the University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Targu Mures, central Romania. The decision, which came following a proposal of the ruling Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania, UDMR, has sparked off reactions from both the social-liberal opposition and the teaching staff of the aforementioned university. The opposition has accused the Liberal-Democrats of caving in to what they called the UDMR blackmail and threatened them with a no-confidence vote.

Trade unions, the Students League and the leadership of the university have announced their intention to contest the government decision, invoking political interference in the university’s autonomy. Another decision was to change admission procedures to higher education institutions. After disastrous results in the Bacalaureate examinations of 2011, the Ministry of Education decided that students must be admitted to universities either through a written or oral examination, or on the basis of results obtained in the Bacalaureate exams. Admission to higher education was so far based on the results the applicant obtained in high school.