What the newspapers say: December 11, 2009

Now that elections are over, political struggles over the formation of a new government are underway and most newspapers on Friday cover parts of the struggle. After the fall of the economy, the cost of the political crisis is 1.5 billion euro and 50,000 unemployed, one paper reads. Elsewhere in the news, Romanians living in Spain and Italy are most discriminated Europeans, a survey reads.

Political struggles are not over just yet, and the crisis in politics continues, as the President needs to put forward a government, which should be accepted by the Parliament, to put an end to it.

Evenimentul Zilei reads about PD-L’s intention to seek out 25 people from the Liberals to form a minority government. Liberals are tempted with funding for their mayors and the possibility to run under their party in 2012 in the same colleges.

A minority government, set up by the Democrat Liberals and Hungarian Democrats with a majority in the Parliament is the most credited formula in PDL at the moment. Such a minority government needs another 21 votes in the Parliament to pass the government.

The same idea was put forward by the Hungarian leader Marko Bela.As PM, leaders of the Democrat Party think about former PM Emil Boc. Democrat Liberals announced that the new PM will be decided as negotiations run between parties.

Gandul reads that Basescu would like to nominate Romania’s Central Bank governor Isarescu as PM and to keep some ministers from the previous government. However, Mugur Isarescu already announced publicly that he is not interested in the position.

Sources within the party read that the President is trying to convince him and to offer him the guarantee of a period in which he would keep his job at the National Bank. If Isarescu refuses, the next best thing considered is a political PM, from PDL.

Rumors have it that Elena Udrea will continue to run the Tourism ministry while Vasile Blaga will receive the Regional Development ministry.

Meanwhile, Cotidianul reads that the stock market, the country’s ratings, IMF, EU and World Bank loans risk to fall apart due to the political crisis. In the last two weeks, the paper reads, the Bucharest exchange rate lost 900 million euro due to the decrease of the market capitalization. The evolution of the stock market depends on the political crisis, expert Gabriel Aldea declared.

The two IMF loans worth 3.2 billion euro, together with the EU loan and the 300 million euro from the World Bank have been postponed for who knows when! Romania lost 4.5 billion euro from the mentioned organizations for an interest rate of 3.25% per year.

To cover for the money, the state took loans from commercial banks at an interest rate of 5.25% per year. The difference in interest rate imply a cost of over 90 million euro. The political crisis is not translated as an economic one, but also as a social crisis: during the electoral campaign, almost 30,000 Romanians were laid off, authorities inform. For December some 22,000 people will be laid off.

Elsewhere in the news, Gandul reads that Romanians living in Spain and Italy are most discriminated against while gypsies in Romania are less discriminated than in Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia or Hungary.

At least 56% of the Romanians living in Spanish cities and 54% of the Romanians living in Italy were targets of discrimination acts, a EU Fundamental Rights Agency study reveals. Romanians in the two mentioned states, together with Eastern Europeans in Great Britain, North Africans in Mediterranean countries and Turkeys in Germany and Austria were the main minorities to suffer from discrimination.

Researchers interviewed 502 Romanians in Italy and 508 in Spain. The analysis revealed that 91% of the Romanians in Spain and 90% in Italy had at least a paid job. 10% did not have a job, or studied there, the results read. At least 77% of them have a job at the moment.

Compared to the European average rate of discrimination, Romanians fall below the rate: 18% of Romanians in Spain and 11% in Italy complained they have been seriously discriminated against in the last year. However, the percent is lower than the 34% of Romanian gypsies who declared they were harassed