National Press Review, 23 September

Yesterday’s failure in the accession to the Schengen area is covered by most newspapers today.

“The entry into the Schengen area was postponed”, the Jurnalul Naţional writes, adding in the subtitle “Operation blockade tulips - invalidated. The authorities found some harmless larvae.”

The newspaper explaines that “Romania does not enter the Schengen area for now” and describes how the Netherlands and Finland kept their word and rejected our accession yesterday at Brussels at the Council of Justice and Home Affairs.

As for the Dutch flowers, the paper reveals that, beyond tax evasion seized by the authorities, the laboratory analysis showed that the bulbs of the trucks stopped at the border did not contain any dangerous bacteria, but just some insects which do not require quarantine as the Minister of Agriculture, Valeriu Tabără, informed.

The România Liberă announces that “After tulip war milk war will come.” The daily brings into the readers' attention the statement President Traian Basescu made on Wednesday, according to which “Severe measures will be taken to control the milk, not only the one coming from Holland, but also from Poland, from Hungary and from everywhere”. This action is meant to control tax evasion, the same reason the President gave in the context of Dutch flowers.

The producers and associations in the dairy industry do not seem to share the concern of the President – it is also commented in the article, as confirmed by the head of ALBALACT, Raul Ciurtin, who said that “the only tax evasion on the Romanian diary market is committed by the peasants who sell without papers.”

The Evenimentul Zilei describes “What we missed by delaying the entry into Schengen” and lists beside the advantages also the disadvantages of an area without internal frontiers. However, the publication writes a brief history of the Schengen area.

The same newspaper also features “Top counties who wasted European money” and notes that “the heads of areas that have spent European funds illegally have to give back more than three million euro.”

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