What the newspapers say: May 11, 2011

Last year in Romania there were 603 public tenders annulled worth 2.72 billion euro. After two years of delays, the trial involving journalist Cornel Nistorescu for injuring two motorcycle drivers starts today. Romania is dependent on Turkey for its main vegetables despite its agricultural potential.

Romania libera reads on Wednesday that there is over 2.72 billion euro worth of public tenders cancelled without any administrative sanctions ruled. The state’s institutions who proved to have illegal tenders in which the law was not respected claim that the real problem is that the law is interpretable.

The newspaper investigated those tenders with the biggest sums of money involved and concluded that in most cases, in 2010 tenders were cancelled because tenders were not organized according to the law. When contacted by the newspaper, those in charge said that there was just an error and could not say whether the public servant who made the mistake was ever sanctioned or not.

Evenimentul Zilei reads that after two years of postponing the investigation through contestations and false witnesses, the trial involving journalist Cornel Nistorescu for injuring two young people on a motorcycle starts today. Throughout the investigation Nistorescu contested every document made by prosecutors including the medial – legal expertise and the car expertise and a year after the event he found a witness who claimed that the accident took place because of the two people on the motorcycle.

However, the witness failed to pass the lie detector test. The accident took place on December 6, 2008 downtown Bucharest when the car Nistorescu was driving hit a Honda motorcycle lead by Tiberiu Gabriel Florescu and his friend with him on the motorcycle.

If Nistorescu will be sentenced, he risks a six months to three years prison time and will have to pay about 8,000 lei for the treatment of the two victims of the accident.

Romania libera wonders how Romania became dependant on the Turks for its main vegetables despite its agricultural potential. At the moment Romania is dependent by the tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers from Turkey. Turkey is the world’s seventh producer in the world where more than half of annual 1 billion dollars exports come from the ground.

The newspaper reads in a bad season, for each acre Turks obtain 250 tons of tomatoes and in a good season about 350 tons. The price of tomatoes is very high starting October to March when Turkey owns Europe’s market: there is no other competitor in the cold season.

One of the factors influencing competitiveness of Turkish tomatoes to Romania is the cost of transports which is double compared to similar destinations. The explanation is that in Romania Turks go with their trucks full and return empty because Romania does not have many things to export.