What the newspapers say: June 18, 2008

All newspapers on Wednesday read about Romania’s national team defeat in the Euro 2008 competition. Elsewhere in the news, Liberal PM Tariceanu plans to reshuffle the party’s leadership to cut off Transports minister Ludovic Orban’s influence. More in the news, Ukraine organizes the first cruise to the Serpent Island, in an attempt to prove that the island is populated.

All newspapers read about Romania’s national team and its defeat at Euro 2008. Cotidianul reads that the limits of our team in front of other European level teams were clear. Romania’s national team played well but time and effort will have to pass until we will be able to face a team such as Netherlands.

After two sacrificial draws with France and Italy in the opening matches, we were already thinking of arrangements with the Dutch, of a victory against Spain in the quarterfinals – the tactics putting up a defensive ten with one striker, Mutu – and already dreaming of beating the Dutch in the quarterfinals and playing the finals against Croatia.

However, our hopes were scattered in a million pieces, picked up by Romanian fans who supported the team all the way, despite the evident defeat.

As politics and football seem to blend together at times, Liberal PM Tariceanu plans to reconfigure the leadership of the party, in an attempt to better his influence within the executive, Evenimentul Zilei reads.

The newspaper argues that Tariceanu plans to impose a collegiate leadership with him on the lead and other Liberals who are closer to him. Such a move, journalists argue, would have a double edged impact.

On the one hand, the new leadership will establish the candidacy of each Liberal leader in the fall Parliamentary elections. On the other hand, with an imminent Liberal Congress in 2009, Tariceanu plans to pull the strings to secure his votes within the party. The collegiate leadership will choose the candidates to run for an executive function in the party.

This way, journalists speculate, Ludovic Orban, currently a leader of the Liberals, will have a limited influence within the party. The bad electoral support received by Orban in the June local elections stirred up the controversy between Tariceanu and Orban.

More in the news, Romania libera reads that Ukraine organized the first cruise to the Serpent Island in the Black Sea, in an attempt to prove, once again, that the island is populated. However, Romania libera journalists were not allowed to take the cruise.

The main reasons invoked by Ukrainian authorities were dismantled by the journalists but the final argument of the former was that Romanians cannot go on the island. As expected, even if the journalists could not reach the island, it turns out that the cruise did not actually reach its destination.

Authorities declared that due to unfavorable weather conditions, the boat could not reach the destination. Ukrainian newspapers read that authorities plan to build two hotels, each hosting 50 rooms for tourists.

Even if Ukrainian authorities do everything in their power to prove that the island is populated, Ukrainians declare that the island is unreachable and is populated by a military base. People declare that if one tries to approach the island, has every chance of being shot.