National Press Review February 27

“The Mafia from Strehaia has relatives at the very top of the police department”, we find out from România Liberă.

According to the investigation of the Terrorism and Organized Crime Investigation Department, in order to avoid paying state taxes, tens of people have paid money to ghost companies owned by the Romani from Strehaia in exchange for fictional services.

The tax evasion is supposedly worth 20 million euro. The most important figure whom the district attorneys are searching for at the moment is the “King of the asphalt” from Argeș, who, with the help of people in law enforcement, has been on a winning streak of contracts from his county and the surrounding areas, funded through public money.

On the new Law of Education, Evenimentul Zilei writes: “The parents’ dictatorship in schools is underway”.

Both the local communities and parents will be more actively involved. What this means that local authorities, parents, and teachers and school instructors will each own one third of the votes.

Adevărul gives us bad news: “Cold winter, snow everywhere – bad omens for the coming year in agriculture” .

The weather conditions are shattering any hopes for a productive year: the freezing cold and the enormous quantity of snow have produced unrecoverable damages, according to the farmers. Some crops are completely compromised.

In România Liberă, we are presented an interview with the Ministry of European Affairs, Leonard Orban. In Orban’s opinion, the Members of Parliament should not be definitively excluded from tapping into European funds.

As long as there is no conflict of interest, of course, he adds. With regard to stopping the funding for the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources Development, Leonard Orban states that problems had been found even during the 2009 audit, but the then Ministries of Labour ignored the irregularities.

On the secret candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party for the position of mayor of Bucharest, Jurnalul Naţional writes: “The Udrea – Becali axis is trying to stop rumours and surprise everyone”.

Udrea has not said one word about it. Becali, on the other hand, immediately announced that his party would support the Liberal Democratic Party candidate for mayor of Bucharest, and he already knew who that person was: “a nice surprise” on the part of the liberal-democrats.

The alliance will be an eventful one, Jurnalul believes.

Acid dialogues have already started to take place: Cristian Preda, Member of the European Parliament and the Democratic Liberal Party, thinks that “Becali is talking nonsense” and that the two political parties have not reached any agreements.

Evenimentul Zilei claims that Mazăre is moving millions of euro of European funds through Cyprus. According to the investigation conducted by the newspaper, a powerful group of businessmen, who are connected to the mayor of Constanţa and to the head of the County Council of Constanţa, Nicuşor Constantinescu, has obtained tens of millions of euro from the institutions run by the two men.

Adevărul comments on the radical decision of Doru Mărieş, the leader of the “21 December” Association, to starve himself for the last ninety-nine days: the extreme fighting tactic of the revolutionaries is blackmail - “Benefits or death!”.

The new law of gratitude is at stake, which would burden the state budget and increase the privileges of some suspicious characters who have turned the act of rebellion into a business, in the opinion of Adevărul.

The final voting session will take place tomorrow in the plenum.

Translated by: Cristina Baciu,
MTTLC, Bucharest University