National Press Review, 8 March

‘Prices have gone up while salaries have come to standstill in last year’, the Evenimentul Zilei reads, pointing out that the standard of living in Romania is worn away by inflation.

According to the dates that were published yesterday by the Institute of National Statistics, salaries decreased by 0.1 percent while prices increased by 7 percent in January 2011 compared to January 2010, which ruined the population.

The same subject is covered in the Adevărul, which reads: ‘the Romanians’ buying power has decreased by 8 percent’.

And now, getting back to the Evenimentul Zilei which identified the place in Romania where poverty is neighbours with wealth.

It concerns the Călăraşi County, the place with the most reduced salaries, two times smaller than the ones in the capital, and the Ilfov County, its neighbours. Neither the

Romanian business men nor the foreign ones have made investments in Călăraşi.
According to potential investors, the cause lies in the lack of good means of transport.

There is no airport, and between Călăraşi and Bucharest one can travel only by a slow train and there is no well qualified work force.

‘In 2010, in Romania, auctions worth 9.5 billion Euros were miscalculated’, the Gândul reads, exclusively presenting the top of those who fought to call off the auctions.
In 2010, over two thousand auctions were called in question by state agencies, according to the annual report of the National Council for Solving Complaints.

Out of them, more than 600 were integrally annulled, which means that the dossier as well as the auction procedure were made with the infringement of the law - the newspaper points out. In 2010 the challengers’ ‘target’ was the Bucharest General City Hall, which was the subject of 80 litigations, 20 of them having prevailed.

In the second place, we have the Romanian Waters Administration with 73 litigations, followed by Romsilva, with 71 and the District 2 Bucharest City Hall with 60 litigations. In the fifth place we have the Romanian National Roads and Highways Company with 54 litigations, out of which the institution lost six.

The challenging of the auctions that were organized by state agencies means, on one side, losses of budget money as well as delays of certain investments and also delays on finishing various works.

‘Labour Code caught up in political war’, the Adevărul reads, running an open campaign for supporting the new provisions which will govern the labour market, for which the government will take responsibility today in front of the Parliament. PDL, through the voice of Prime Minister Emil Boc, insists on the fact that the new bill will encourage the business environment and the competent employees to have nothing to fear. PSD and PNL have submitted a censure motion against the new project.

The PSD leader, Victor Ponta, accuses the fact that the new Labour Code will have but negative effects: ‘smaller salaries, bigger unemployment rate, companies going bankrupt’. The PNL leader, Crin Antonescu, characterised the new law as ‘unbalanced’, because: ‘First and foremost, it’s not good for the business environment.’

Also in the Adevărul, in an exclusive interview, the Minister of Labour, Ioan Botiş, states that the new Labour Code would take out at least two hundred thousand workplaces from the black zone.

After all the fights and negotiations regarding the Labour Code, the România Liberă tries to identify the employers’ name and whom they represent.

A dozen of employers’ federations state that they represent the Romanian companies in their relation with the unions and the state, but most employers don’t know exactly who is negotiating for them and how.

‘In fact, the Romanian employers are as parti-colored and conflicted as unions’, the newspaper read. Two large groups of interest silently dispute their influence when talking about the alteration of the legislation: on one side, the classic employers and on the other hand, the lobby structures of the foreign investors.

The newspaper also observes the fact that only a part of the large companies in Romania are represented in the employers’ federations that give their notice for legislative projects of the Government and so much the less multinational conglomerates.

The Jurnalul Naţional reads on the first page: ‘The Government is lying in its teeth to the European Parliament regarding the conditions provided for the disabled’. In an answer sent to Brussels, the Ministry of Labour shows that the autistics have all the rights and presents Romania as a paradise for those with such problems.

The newspaper contradicts the report sent to Europe by presenting a few actual cases, in which the disabled people were reduced or even annulled the help they needed or they haven’t received any answer to the petitions they submitted to the authorities.

Translated by: Silvia Cora
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University