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| THE WEEK IN REVIEW 11-17/10/2010 |
| (2010-10-15) |
| Last updated: 2010-10-18 14:45 EET |
130 years after Romania and Germany established diplomatic ties, Chancellor Angela Merkel came to Bucharest to confirm Berlin's wish to carry on the positive economic and political relations with Romania. The talks with President Traian Basescu and Prime Minister Emil Boc also tackled Romania's main foreign policy objective – the Schengen accession, scheduled for March 2011. Against this background, the German official highlighted the importance of securing the EU’s external borders. On the other hand, Angela Merkel mentioned the need for enhanced transparency in the judiciary, so as to encourage German investors to come to Romania. According to prime minister Emil Boc, the endorsement of the Law on public-private partnerships will enable stakeholders to develop bilateral economic projects to modernise the Romanian infrastructure. At a regional level, Bucharest and Berlin share the goal of resolving the Transdniester conflict, and the two capitals already work together to this end within EU structures.
Protests have continued this week, among public sector employees who are disgruntled with the decrease in their incomes further to the application of harsh austerity measures. Finance Ministry staff stopped working, and were joined by workers in local offices around the country. Following the protests, Finance Minister Gheorghe Ialomitianu promised that overdue August and September incentives will be paid, on the basis of performance criteria. These incentives would have been paid mainly from the assets seized during tax evasion operations, but the prime minister turned down this suggestion. The Minister added that the situation will be solved once Parliament passes an ordinance on the salaries of public sector employees, which includes an amendment made by the Liberal Democratic Party, in power, concerning the inclusion of an average incentives value in the gross salaries of Finance Ministry staff. Teaching staff in a number of schools have also gone on strike, to protest the 25% wage cuts and massive redundancies in the system.
The government decided to take responsibility before Parliament for the National Education Bill, which was passed by the Chamber of Deputies but has been stuck on the Senate's agenda for half a year. The Prime Minister explained that the new bill radically changes the curricula, allowing for a shift to an education system focusing on competencies. Emil Boc:
“We decided to take responsibility before Parliament, because this bill is vital for the Romanian education, and any day that is wasted virtually reduces the chances of any student in Romania to a modern and high-performance education system.”
Meanwhile, opposition MPs still decline participation in Chamber of Deputies meetings, and demand that Speaker Roberta Anastase, a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, should be dismissed on grounds of rigging the vote on the pension bill, which has been returned to Parliament by president Traian Basescu.
The world's leading natural gas supplier, the Russian giant Gazprom, will analyse a scenario in which the planned South Stream gas pipeline transits Romania. The chief of the Russian corporation, Alexei Miller, was in Bucharest on Wednesday, to discuss the plan with Romanian authorities. Alexei Miller and Romanian officials signed a memorandum of intention, in which the Russian party undertakes to carry out a technical and economic analysis of this plan. The pipeline, whose construction is scheduled to start in 2013, is designed to take Russian natural gas to the EU, by-passing Ukraine. Alexei Miller also talked with the Romanian prime minister about the possibility of signing a direct natural gas supply contract between the Russian giant and the Romanian company Romgaz. According to the Gazprom manager, the South Stream project is not competing with other similar projects, but was initiated in order to diversify gas pipeline routes towards European states. Romania is currently involved in another major natural gas transit project, the Nabucco, which is intended to bring Asian natural gas bypassing Russia.
The ECHR has announced the temporary suspension of all trials on property abusively seized by the Communists in Romania and not yet returned to their rightful owners by successive post-communist governments. Romania's former justice minister, MEP Monica Macovei, explains what this decision means:
“The Government of Romania has 18 months to do what the Court has recommended. Until then, the ECHR will no longer try such cases. They will be suspended, because the point is that the Government must put together a viable mechanism. As you know, our case law is rather inconsistent: some plaintiffs are awarded compensations, others are not. Obviously, the ECHR has made these recommendations; they are only compulsory in moral terms. In legal terms, if these recommendations are not followed, the ECHR decision is sent to the EU Committee of Ministers, which will then monitor Romania's compliance.”
At present, around one thousand such cases are pending ECHR resolution. The Prime Minister ordered that an inter-ministry group should be set up, in order to draw up a package of measures for the revision of relevant legislation.
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