National Press Review, 11 April

‘Antifraud Eyes of Traian Basescu’ – the Adevărul headlined on the front page explaining: ‘The National Health Insurance House blocked for a few hours the computer system applications, designed to prevent the fraud in health, in order to be operational in the presence of President Basescu.

The NHIH Information System has worked perfectly at its inauguration, because it had been online only the official presenting the application to the president.

In order to not block the system in front of the president and the press, the NHIH leadership sent a notification into the area, announcing that the system will be off for just a few hours in the official inauguration day for various updates and validations, and not let anyone access it outside the one testing it in front of the President.

The system collapsed after three weeks. The investment, which has swallowed so far over 80 million euros, still causes troubles to the county health insurance houses, as it often showed errors and crashes - according to the information obtained by the journalists from the Adevărul.

In the same paper, good news for those driving through Bucharest: today the Basarab overpass was open.

After perpetual restrictions that the mammoth overpass has imposed to the drivers for five years, the Basarab overpass will be open piece by piece in the next six weeks.

The daily Puterea also wrote about roads, from which we found out that ‘Cernavodă-Constanţa motorway ends in court.’

The French company requested the supplementation of the contract with 8 million euros, but the Ministry of Transport did not agree.

If the Ministry decided to terminate the contract, as premier Boc has announced recently, they would have to pay penalties of several million euros, and the works on the sun’s highway would be delayed by two years.

The Jurnalul Naţional disclosed another damaging business of the roads, which had installed on the DN1 luxury reflective lights, costing 50 euros each, while similar objects could have been brought for 10 euros apiece.

And in order to grant the contract to a preferential firm without an auction, they fitted the amount of 15 000 euros.

The newspaper used this disclosure to remind of a similar deal in 2009, when, after the completion of the overpass in the north of Bucharest, there have been planted the most expensive shrubs in the country, 18 million RON a piece.

Two years after the ‘shrub’ business, all the trees have disappeared.

‘Super-pensions come back ‘ – the România Liberă headlined, revealing that over a thousand of those with high pensions, which have challenged the court their decrease, have won against the Romanian state.

In the grounds of the judicial sentences the courts have particularly noted that the European Convention on Human Rights held that ‘the applicant's entitlement to pension is a good’ and ascertained that ‘a substantial decrease in the pension levels could be regarded as affecting the substance of the right to property and even the right to remain a beneficiary of the insurance system during consenescence.’

The intensive agriculture before 1989, the lack of sanitation and the litter thrown randomly gave us a terrible legacy: more wells and fields have been polluted with nitrates – we read in the Evenimentul Zilei, which incorporated the results of a study of the National Administration of Romanian Waters.

Thus, in rural areas, wells must be dug at least ten feet deep and located upstream, as far from the toilets and stables.

58 percent of Romania's territory is vulnerable to nitrate pollution, claimed the specialists of Romanian Waters.

Finally, sport. All today's newspapers noted the performance of the Romanian women's gymnastics team at the European Championships in Berlin, where the girls coached by Octavian Belu and Mariana Bitang won three gold medals, two silver medals and one bronze.


Translated by: Iulia Florescu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University