National Press Review, 4 August

Bechtel is only going to be in Romania for two more years; a national high score does not bring happiness; rich children, luxury vehicles and public roads rallies are just some of today’s subjects.

"Americans are going away and leaving us without motorways", the Evenimentul Zilei reads on the first page. "After eight years the Americans are terminating the contract".

Don’t be too sad. The Evenimentul Zilei writes that the Americans are leaving the construction site after laying 116.5 km in ten years, at the average cost of EUR 116 million per km.

Bechtel will be working in Romania for another two years, on a 64 km segment.

There will be around 300 km without a contract on Transilvania Motorway and there will be a public auction for them.

Journalists write: "According to the cost approved by the Government, the new contractors will not receive more than EUR 6.9 million per kilometer".

The România Liberă also draws the same conclusion: the Americans are still making profit.

The România Liberă: "Why do Romanians accept bad contracts with banks?”

Because, the daily writes, "almost 60 percent of people borrowing money do not compare offers before signing a contract".

This is the conclusion of a study on the level of financial knowledge, ordered by the Romanian Association of Banks.

The same document reveals that 40 percent of people using a financial product have not read their contracts entirely.

Arithmetic – a real pain for the Social Liberal Union (USL), today’s press writes.

"USL does not change the regional arithmetic", the România Liberă writes.

Newspapers write about the surveys of the Social Democrat Party, which reveal that all the City Halls that the Liberal Democrat Party and the National Union for Romania’s Progress have are ensured with ‘police’ between 5 and 20 percent.

The Adevărul gives the example of Arad, where the Democrat Liberal Mayor Gheorghe Falcă obtained a little over 40 percent, whereas the USL candidate only has 23 percent.

This happens even though the Union has 52 percent at county level.

There are similar situations in Braşov, Alba Iulia, Botoşani, Ploieşti and Craiova.

Today the Jurnalul Naţional writes about a different kind of kings.

These are "the kings with luxury wheels".

"Kids with rich parents are juggling with people’s lives in traffic", the Jurnalul Naţional presents a few recent cases:

"Son of an advisor drunk and without a licencebehind the wheel", "Son of a Mayor involved in Police scandal" and so on and so forth.

"Can these people be considered a danger to society?", journalists wonder and then draw the following conclusion: "Even men of the law have difficulties solving this dilemma."
Which is why we think being the son of… is a real benefit.


Translated by: Gabriela Lungu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University