President Basescu prepares for a new attack against the Government, details about his speech - scheduled for Wednesday - being published by several newspapers in advance. The rest of the news is just the average, everyday news: corrupt Police officers are millionaires, the smallest country roads in Romania cost as much as a highway, mortgage credits will lose market share in the near future, so fleeing to Italy once again seems the smart thing to do, even more after the European Commission is about to block Italy's intention to expel EU citizens from its territory.
Romania president Traian Basescu will make a speech in front of the Parliament today, offering his own point of view on the economic performance of the Tariceanu Government, a sort of a counter-balance after the results proudly published last week by the Cabinet. Basescu will invoke reports put up by the Secret Services, indicating that Romania may see a crisis after January 1, 2009, mainly due to the increase before the term of pensions and salaries. Basescu will also denounce the attempts of the Parliament to issue laws for "political clients" and the pressure on anti-graft institutions, Cotidianul reads.
Former Democrat - Liberal Transport Minister Radu Berceanu accuses his successor, Liberal Ludovic Orban, of spending too much money on rehabilitation contracts. Orban says that Romstrade, a road works company owned by a friend of Orban, received 385 million euro for the rehabilitation of a 148 kilometers portion of a county road. The sum represents 2.6 million euro per kilometer, compared to 0.7 million, the price for similar works in the same area, same Cotidianul reads.
Good news for Romanians working Italy though: the European Commission warned the Government in Rome that the automatic expelling of EU citizens comes against the community law. EC expects a solution at a very fast pace, threatening to impose sanctions against Italy. The expelling procedures were modified recently, mainly due to crimes committed by Roma minority ethnics, Evenimentul Zilei informs.
Back to the usual news in Romania: a millionaire Police officer was caught receiving a 600 RON bribe (some 170 Euros). Investigators say that the officer had gathered in time over one million Euros, real estate properties and several businesses, all from bribes from speeding drivers on the "Sun Highway", Gandul reveals. Interior Ministry psychologists say that it is a classic bribe addiction case.
Romanians who don't receive bribes will soon have problems in maintaining the cash flow at high levels, the new credit rules being close to diminishing between 10 and 30% the amount of money one may obtain through a mortgage credit, according to Gandul.
That may be a problem for many, but not for the coach of the Romanian national football team, Victor Piturca, who recently bought a Mercedes CL 500. The news is not that he spent some 100,000 Euros, but that he had one of the players, Ciprian Marica, buy the car for him. Marica, being a player at VfB Stuttgart, has a 20% discount from Mercedes, one of the team sponsors. Evenimentul Zilei believes that the 25,490 Euros discount also represent the moral compromising of Piturca.
The good news of the day is that Romanian TV station ProTV won the International Emmy Awards "News" section. The awarded journalists - Paula Herlo, Cosmin Stan,
Sergiu Matei, Marius Ivan, Eduard Tarna and Alex Livadariu - produced a series of feature stories about the children left home by Romanian working abroad, called "Do you know how your child is doing?".
