King’s speech covered by international press

Apart from the inevitable topic of the European summit crisis, the international press also writes about the speech delivered by King Michael to the Romanian Parliament.

“Speaking on his 90th birthday, he used the occasion to attack the country’s leadership over the past 20 years”, the Washington Post writes and underlines the absence of several government officials, including that of President Traian Băsescu.

“The fall of the communist regime in 1989 did not improve the relation between the last king and its country because his popularity worried the former communist power of Bucharest”, the Spanish quotidian La Vanguardia points out.

It also adds “This act represents a tribute brought to one of the last leaders alive from the period of the Second World War. ‘Despite his age (90) the king still manages to make the political class tremble”, Le Monde observes. “The former king used his speech to plead for the cause of the monarchy abolished in 1947”, The Times believes.

In Greece, the quotidian Eleftheropia writes that “The former Romanian monarch posed as a national symbol”. The event is also mentioned in the Russian press. “The king of Romania returns to the great politics”, Izvestia writes, mentioning that ‘Michael I may become the flag of the unite opposition against the president”.

The Ukrainian newspaper Korrespondent underlines the “bright presence, hiding the years carried on his shoulders” of the former leader of Romania and “the round of applause from the deputies of different political parties”.

Another Ukrainian publication, Podrobnosti, notes that “the Ukrainian minister of defence declared that the deployment of the American missile ballistic system to Romania represented an internal problem of the Romanian state”.

All European countries are dealing with the euro area’s debt crisis.

The Wall Street Journal writes that if ‘the future of banking is in question all around the world, but nowhere so as in Central and Eastern Europe. The choice is between sticking with Western European banks that may be hobbled for years by the euro zone’s fiscal problems or renationalising the banking system”.

Quoted by the EUobserver, the President of the European Commission says that “Plans for restoring confidence on European Union banking sector should not affect the credit flow in Romania”. As for the extension of the Schengen area the same Barroso sustains that the accession of Romania to Schengen “is a matter of fairness”, EUobserver also writes.

Also, the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita pays a tribute to the late director Liviu Ciulei, who “exerted a huge influence on the Romanian culture”

Translated by: Violeta Mavrodin
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University