National Press Review, May 22

"Ponta is calling 322 against Basescu" - writes Evenimentul Zilei on Prime Minister’s approach which will require to Parliament to decide whether at the European Council of June 28 Romania will be represented by the Prime Minister or the Head of State.

At the same time, publication also comments on the choice of Parliament as a mediator instead of the Constitutional Court.

România Liberă analyzes "Why lose 100 million euros from European funds" and states that in a few days we will find out if the community forum suspends payments for labour market software.

Huge budgets for projects with insignificant results and the lack of rigorous evaluations have been identified by the author, helped by the Institute for Public Policy experts, as causes which could lead to such decision by European authorities.

Same subject also in Adevărul, which mentions that Prime Minister Victor Ponta might ask, for the first time, the re-accreditation of Management Authority of the program in question, if the European Commission's report finds serious problems in human resources.

The Chief Executive explained that, in this case, it rates 1.2 billion euros, money for the current year and for 2013, but there is the certainty that in 2014 we had a competent authority.

The newspaper also exhibits irregularities also at other programs financed by EU funds and adds that Romania has to solve many systemic problems, particularly on the public purchases and their control.

EU executive expects that, at the latest by the end of June 2012, the Romanian authorities' commitments to be met.

Finally, Jurnalul Naţional presents "pension, between pyramidal system and personal account".

The newspaper reveals the Labor Minister’s opinion, Mariana Câmpeanu, who claims that public pension system should be transformed into an accumulation system to personal accounts, and the saved money to be used as development fund of the state, not for covering the so-called "black holes".

It seems that, for a long term, the current system is unsustainable because of the decreasing number of employees, compared with that of pensioners, which is why the authorities have taken the measure to transfer a part of the contributions to social insurances by a private pension fund – adds the publication.

Translated by Alexandra-Diana Mircea
MTTLC, Bucharest University