National Press Review, 16 September

We learn from the Jurnalul Naţional and the România Liberă that "Romania might buy new F-16 planes", not second hand, like the Supreme Council of National Defence said they would last year.

The U.S. Ambassador to Bucharest, Mark Gitenstein, revealed yesterday that President Băsescu discussed the subject at the Pentagon. As for the contract with Bechtel, Gitenstein said that the annulment terms had pleased everyone.

"Macovei got the 120 billion euro anti-corruption resolution passed", the România Liberă headlines about the successful document adopted by the European Parliament, whose originators includes the former Minister of Justice.

The mechanism requested by the members of the European Parliament could help Romania drain corruption in areas such as public work contracts and European funds, the newspaper notes.

"Petrom greedier than tycoon Exxon", we read in the Jurnalul Naţional.

The largest Romanian company stunned everybody when reporting record profits in the crisis year.

The Jurnalul also writes that the state burned its bridges behind itself and sold Petrom to the Austrian OMV group for nothing. They took over a company that was "full of losses" and after only six years they can say they have recovered their investment.

The Evenimentul Zilei draws our attention that "the new weighting rules has made bread abusively expensive".

Although manufacturers claim that up to now they have been offering bread with an optimal weight, yesterday, when the new regulations of the National Authority for Consumer Protection came into force, the bread "inflated" and became more expensive on average by 5 percent.

In Adevărul we read about "the dramatic effects of the Danube running dry".

The river is turning into a stream: its level has fallen by about a meter and a half below the reference rate and in some places the water is no higher than the waist level. The situation is alarming: the banks have turned into desert, the cargo the ships are blocked and the water supplying of the cities is at risk.

The Ziarul Financiar announces the transaction of the year in the banking sector. Erste managed after a year of striving to convince four of the five financial investment companies sell their BCR shares.

425 million for an additional 24 percent of BCR and Erste has full control of the largest bank in Romania. But some investors say that the amount is ridiculous.

Also in the Ziarul Financiar we find good news about the wine industry: according to the producers’ counts, the grape harvest is 30 percent higher than last year. And qualitatively speaking things are doing well too. The weather was favourable and new fields were harvested.

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