Romanian PM to meet IMF and EU officials
Romanian Prime Minister Victor Ponta is expected to meet representatives of the International Monetary Fund and European Union at the end of their technical mission to Bucharest later on Monday. IMF experts were assesing the impact the recent tax cuts included in the new Fiscal Code while calling for measures designed to restore budget ballance. Talks with IMF and European officials are expected to resume in June.
Former Romanian minister resigns as senator
Romania’s former finance minister resigned his seat in the country’s Senate on Monday. Darius Vâlcov submitted his resignation after the Senate approved an arrest warrant issued on his name by the country’s anti-corruption watch dog, the DNA, in April. Mr. Vâlcov is accused of corruption-related crimes commited at a time when he was the mayor of the Romanian southern town of Slatina. The Senate is expected to announce its decision on Tuesday.
Protests in Bucharest
Dozens of people protested before the headquarters of Romania’s National Education Ministry in the capital Bucharest on Monday. The protesters are part of the non-teaching staff of several schools in the Romanian central county of Covasna. They were not included in an emergency ordinance issued in 2014 stipulating a pay rise of 5 percent for teaching staff so their wages remained unchanged at the level of a minimum salary, protesters claim. The Sanitas trade union representing the protesters took the case to a court in Covasna and a verdict was still expected. Some 30 people took to the street in the Covasna county’s capital Sf. Gheorghe last months as they picketed the Prefecture building in the city for similar reasons.
UNITER Awards Ceremony
„Ion Luca Caragiale” National Theatre in the capital Bucharest is expected to host the annual UNITER Awards Ceremony on Monday. UNITER (an acronym for Theatre Union in Romania) was founded in 1990 following Romania’s anti-Communist revolution in December 1989 as the country’s first autonomous organisation of its kind. The association is best known for its annual awards ceremony rewarding best performances, performers and theatre artists. A jury including well-known theatre critics, performers and directors such as Ştefania Cenean, Dan C. Mihăilescu, Valeria Seciu, Oana Stoica and Alexa Visarion made its decision so winners will be announced at a gala on Monday at 9 PM. The UNITER Senate ruled that its Exellence Award should go the British director Peter Brook for „his influence and impact of his theatrical performances on the Romanian theatre”. The life achievement awards will go to such actors as Vladimir Jurăscu, and Mihaela Arsenescu-Werner, director Alexandru Hausvater, and Mira Iosif, a theatre critic and historian. The UNITER Awards Ceremony is also available live on Radio Romania Cultural.
Alexandru Danga
