What the newspapers say: August 22, 2007

With another heat wave approaching Romania, there’s little news to account for on Tuesday. Even the soon-to-come censure motion that threatens to overthrow the Tariceanu government fails to produce more than a simple public speculation from a party that may soon lose its Parliamentarian representation.

It’s a yellow code alert again in Southern Romania, where temperature will rise on Wednesday up to 38 degrees Centigrade. 25 counties and Bucharest will be under the alert until Friday, Evenimentul Zilei reads.

In politics, the head of the Hungarians’ Democratic Union (UDMR) comments that the success of the censure motion initiated by the Social Democrat opposition (PSD) would only bring early elections, not a government that would include PSD members, Jurnalul National reads.

Speaking of the PSD leaders: former Romania president Ion Iliescu publicly accused the official document that condemns Romania’s Communist regime.

The round table on „Romanian Revolution in December 1989 and the Presidential Commission Report on the analysis of the Romanian Communist dictatorship” hosted an embarrassing moment when Ion Iliescu, known as a servant of the former regime, attacked the report because „it only has six pages out of 600 about the Romanian Revolution”, Jurnalul National reads.

Although the round table took place in March, it is the opening subject of the newspaper, journalists getting for the first time a glimpse at the speeches’ transcriptions.

In business, things start to look better for the exporters, but worse for the rest. Romanian currency, RON, begun to fall after more than a year of continuous appreciation.

Analysts see the parity growing to 3.31 RON per euro before the end of the year, according to Evenimentul Zilei, or even 3.6 RON per euro, according to Romania Libera.

Populace will suffer also because of another major price growth: natural gas will cost 50% more in January 2008, given the alignment to European prices, promised at Romania’s accession to the European Union. Iacob Aleksa, Romgaz general manager, hopes the deadline may be postponed to 2010, Jurnalul National reads.