National Press Review, 13 April

The Adevărul analyses the situation of the European funds absorption by Romania, which was evaluated yesterday by the Specialty Committee of the European Parliament.
The Minister of Regional Development, Elena Udrea, raised yesterday protests from the euro-congressmen due to the fact that she didn’t attend the hearings to explain the European funds absorption.

Euro-deputies accuse her of defying the European Parliament. She has sent to the hearings State Secretary Răzvan Murgeanu, who was stopped by the euro-congressmen while trying to present a report full of figures, which translators could hardly cope with.

‘Too bad the Minister couldn’t make it and we were forces to accept the attendance of the State Secratry. But normally, when we invite the Minister, she is the one that has to come. We have info that Mrs. Udrea is in Brussels and that is why I believe this is not the good way to treat the European Parliament’, declared for the ‘Adevărul’, a German congressman.

The same newspaper reminds of the evaluation made at the end of last year by the National Bank Governor, Mugur Isărescu, according to which Romania managed to assimilate just the tenth part of the whole amount offered by the European Union.

The Jurnalul Naţional is warning, on the front page, that, and I quote: ‘PDL summer houses threaten the Bucegi National Park Reservation’. The newspaper reveals that business is being conducted on the Bucegi Platform by those close to the party, who succeeded in obtaining European money.

According to the article’s authors, the state’s decision is to build an asphalt road to Babele to facilitate access to cabins and hotels in the area for political leaders and their friends and families.

The same newspaper claims the companies that were announced winners yesterday for construction contracts of some highway segments on European hall 4, Bucureşti-Nădlac, are the favorite clients of the National Highway Company.

The Evenimentul Zilei is trying to find out how many nitrates are there under the label of mineral water. Almost all bottled waters (either mineral or plate) on the Romanian market contain nitrates, according to the analysis conducted by the only accredited quality assurance laboratory.

The good news is that the nitrates’ level doesn’t exceed the maximum upper limit to any kind of bottled water. However, this indicator is missing more and more from the labels.

The same newspaper writes that the state wants to buy the Arpechim refinery back, as it was sold in 2004 along with all the other actives of Petrom. The Government’s plan is to integrate Arpechim into Oltchim, so that the latter would also produce fuel.
In the România Liberă you can find today the story of a Romanian who has a lot of civic spirit, which is rare species around here. Since he has lost his wife to an infection acquired in the hospital, the former engineer Vasile Barbu has dedicated his life to monitoring the Romanian health care system.

He created an association and, for four years now, armed with a hidden video camera, he has been walking info hospitals to defend patients’ rights.
53 volunteers help him, most of them Med school students, recruited from students’ dorms, but also several lawyers, volunteering as well.

Compared to other organizations of such kind, which live off sponsorships from companies in the pharmaceutical industry, The National Association for Patients’ Protection is proud to self-fund from donations.

Does anyone remember Romania’s thesaurus from Moscow? The România Liberă and the Jurnalul Naţional write that we are in the possession of a treasure of 3.2 billion euros in the Russian capital. The over 91 tons of gold, consisting of coins and lingoes, who were stored in Moscow during World War 1, are mentioned in a recent work by a group of Russian historians, who claim that, indeed, the Romanian treasury is complete – as announced yesterday by the National Bank.

Only that, the last official attempt to recover it was back in 1999 and did not belong to the Romanian authorities, but the European Commission.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University