National Press Review, February 4

‘The Schengen effect – arrests spread throughout the border’ - the Evenimentul Zilei reads on the front page.

After more than 70 border police officers and customs officials in Siret were detained yesterday by the National Anti-Corruption Directorate, another 200 are targeted by anti-corruption prosecutors, and could be detained in the next days, judicial sources claim, quoted by the newspaper.

The money believed to have been taken as bribe by border officers and policemen in Siret amount to one billion old lei during one shift, which is 25 per cent of the value of the goods.

‘A fifth of the Siret border police, involved in the smuggling of cigarettes. They receive daily 30 thousand euros from smugglers. - the Gândul reads on turn.

The România Liberă takes its readers up for a ride in, and I quote: ‘the most absurd construction site in the country’- namely the one started six years ago in the historical centre of Bucharest.

The repeated commitments of former general mayors had only one outcome: in four years, three streets and not one more have been finalized in the historic centre of the Capital.

The current administration takes it even further and promises to rehabilitate 11 streets in less then four months.

The real site in only beginning now.

Work was restarted two weeks ago and mayor Oprescu promised the work will be done in parallel on all streets, unlike how it used to be done, one by one.

A usual, reality does not match the plans.

Wednesday afternoon, when, according to the mayor’s promises the old centre should have been humming with workers, picks and excavators, it was quiet.

A handful of workers were sitting on the Smârdan street, facing the cold while waiting for a colleague.’How are we suppose to work now? On this weather? Yes, we had to work but we received an order to stop because it was 12 degrees minus. Could you stay in this freezing cold for 8 hours? a worker argues’ - reporters of the România Liberă reveal.

65 million euros – that is what the National Road Campaign allocated to renew the roads signs on National Road 1 alone – reads the Jurnalul National which has calculated that with this money – spent on paint – 100 kilometres of national road could have been restored.

The crises does not apply to all of us: judges in the Constitutional Court plan to acquire eight brand-new limos, which have to be manufactured this year and be equipped with the latest technology – the Jurnalul Naţional adds.

Judges are willing to pay over 150 thousand euros on cars, which means that these will cost more then 20 thousand euros each.

Foreign news in today’s papers are mainly about the riots in Egypt, where the new targets are foreign journalists.

‘Egypt – the riot of broken heads’ - headlines the Adevărul, which covers yesterday’s events in Cairo and synthesizes international reactions.

The Jurnalul National special envoys to Egypt write about the revolutionaries in Cairo, armed to the teeth, and also about the extreme poverty they witnessed in the outskirts of the capital, only a few kilometres away from the unleashed citizens in the central square.

In turn, the Gândul took stock of the other dictators supported by the US, who are leading states where riots could break out such as Egypt: King Abdullah and the absolute monarchy in Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah of Jordan, as well as the Presidents of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan or Guinea Equatorial.

Translated by: Manuela Stancu
MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University