What the newspapers say: December 1, 2010 

Romania celebrates its national day today and all newspapers focus on the events organized with this occasion, in Romania and abroad. Find out what activities politicians planed for citizens and how Romanians who leave abroad celebrate this day. Last but not least, Romania and Bulgaria signed an agreement to interconnect gas networks.

Romanians celebrate their national day today. The focus is on Alba Iulia, central Romania, where the unification of the Romanian historical provinces took place. Romania libera reads that events started on November 21st in Alba Iulia.

The city hall organized a cultural parade, a food exhibition and several concerts. Today, starting 2PM, the city hall organized a traditional music concert followed by other concerts. However, the newspaper reads that in other cities, the national day came to mean just a free day, which they enjoy by going in a short trip while others stand in line for free traditional Romanian food offered by city halls.

And politicians and other people take the opportunity to transform events in political campaigns with protests.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that in over 60 foreign cities events are organized to mark Romania’s national day. These are organized by diplomatic missions and NGOs for the Romanian diaspora.

Romania’s Foreign Affairs minister announced that there will be concerts, exhibitions, round tables, film projections and shows. This year, due to budgetary cuts, diplomatic missions did not have a special budget to organize the same events on December 1st.

Therefore, the ministry urged Embassy to seek alternative means of financing. Several diplomatic missions, in countries where Romanians are not that numerous, decided not to organize anything, like: Buenos Aires, Tunis, Rio de Janeiro, Alger, Los Angeles, Pristine, Bratislava, Doha, Vilnius, Kuala Lumpur and Tokyo.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that Romania and Bulgaria signed an agreement to interconnect natural gas transports systems and an inter-governmental agreement was signed today, at Sofia by Economy ministers of the two countries.

State company Bulgartransgaz from Bulgaria and its Romanian counterpart, Transgaz elaborated the draft of the project which they decided to implement as soon as possible, Novinite informs.

Bulgaria, which depends almost entirely on Russia for gas imports, sees the inter-connection as a way to diversify its gas sources.