What the newspapers say: July 21, 2010

Former Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena will be exhumed to prove that they are buried at the Ghencea Civil cemetery. In politics, everything evolves around the EC report published yesterday and President Basescu’s dissatisfied comments on the report. Elsewhere in the news, Romania exports more tropical fruits than carrots, apples, pears or cucumbers even though we are not a tropical country.

After 21 years, former Communist leader Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena will be exhumed in an attempt to prove that they were actually buried there. The exhumation is done at the request of their son, Valentin Ceausescu and Mircea Oprean, the husband of Zoe Ceausescu. Biological data will be elevated and sent at a lab for a DNA test.

The remainings will be re-buried afterward. Valentin Ceausescu and Mircea Oprean recently inherited the graves after years of processes. In June 2008, the Bucharest Appellate Court decided to compel Romania’s Defense ministry to present the two certain evidence that Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu were buried.

Mircea Oprean said that the family needs to know for certain where they were buried. He said that the military were in charge with the funeral at the time and it is impossible that the Defense ministry does not have any evidence of the happening at the time.

The two have been struggling in trials for years to receive the right to exhume the remainings of the Ceausescu family and find out whether they are buried there or not. The two said that if the two are not buried there, then they will sue the state.

In politics, all eyes are watching the reaction of the Romanian politicians after the European Commission published its report on the state of justice in Romania. Especially, on Basescu’s comments on the report.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that President Basescu appreciated as correct most observations in the report but declared that the way the EC formulated certain conclusions is unfair and exaggerated.

Basescu said that the law on ANI which was correctly observed as a stepback by the EC cannot nonetheless trigger a whole negative image when there were enough positive results. To remedy the situation, Basescu urged the government to set up a report concerning all pluses and minuses registered by Romania in the justice system to be sent to every chief of state and to the EC.

Elsewhere in the news, Romania libera reads that Romania exports five times more banana’s than cucumbers. Even though Romania is not a tropical country, its exports of bananas, mango, pineapplem avocado and coconuts exceeded by three tons those of tomatoes, carrots, cucumbers, apples and pears.

Romanians started to consume by 20% more tropical fruits this year. In January – April, Romania’s exports of coconuts, Brasil nuts and caju nuts increased by 27% compared to the same period in 2009. Most coconuts were sent to the Republic of Moldova, Belgiul and Cyprus. Unfortunately, exports of dates, pineapple, avocado, guava and mango decrease by four times in 2010.

However, banana exports increased by three times this year. Most bananas go to Bulgaria. Romania imports more bananas from Hungary than from Panama, the traditional banana producer due to the tropical climate. No one ever considered that Romania would get to export oranges to Spain, a producer of oranges. Well, it did it but it only exported 3 kg of oranges, a symbolic load.

Agriculture minister state secretary Adrian Radulescu said that Romania’s tropicalization is a normal thing. The sad part of all this, the newspaper reads is that for each carrot exported, we import another 81 and for each cabbage exported, we import 137.