Search Results for: Romanian

PROFITS from human trafficking are estimated at USD32 billion-a-year and growing, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), with the trade one of the fastest growing international crimes, now second to the drugs trade and ahead of arms trafficking. But despite its emotive nature as a crime, only recently has the money laundering angle to human trafficking been taken more seriously, and there is still a way to go.…

THE EUROPEAN Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has declared it is ready to investigate the contamination of beef products with horsemeat, because it raises issues of false labelling, food quality and traceability in the European Union (EU) food chain. Although there is no evidence at the moment of any food safety issues, risk managers from EU countries are already conducting extensive tests of meat products to assess their components.…

BY MARK ROWE AND CARMEN PAUN

AMIDST the fanfare that greeted Romania and Bulgaria’s accession to the European Union, there was little expectation that membership would eradicate corruption overnight. There were, though, reasonable grounds for anticipating tangible progress. Five years on, major corruption scrutiny bodies appear to have come to just such a conclusion: that Bulgaria at least has made substantial efforts to clean out some of the worst elements of corruption, but has plenty left to do.…

BY CARMEN PAUN

TWO Romanian banks have been hit by staff issuing EUR85 million fraudulent loans to customers who should never have qualified for financing, the country’s directorate for the investigation of organised crime and terrorism (DIICOT) has revealed. The banks are BRD, controlled by France’s Société Générale, and Volksbank, part of the identically named Austrian group.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

PRESSURE is growing on European Union (EU) ministers to give the EU’s sugar production quota system a stay of execution. MEPs on the European Parliament’s agriculture committee have called for the retention of EU sugar quotas for beet farmers until 2020, rather than follow existing plans to phase them out in 2015.…

BY CARMEN PAUN

Senior Romanian professors have dismissed attacks on their integrity made after they were involved in analysing the accusation of academic plagiarism against the country’s Prime Minister Victor Ponta. The University of Bucharest’s Mircea Dumitru and Professor Marius Andruh have both come under fire from supporters of the prime minister, but have vigorously rejected the criticism levelled against them.…

BY CARMEN PAUN AND KEITH NUTHALL

ROMANIA’S Prime Minister Victor Ponta has been accused of plagiarising his PhD (ironically on the International Criminal Court) by two senior academic bodies. First, the Romanian National Council for Attesting Titles, Diplomas and University Certificates (CNATDCU) ruled on June 29 that the PM copied part of his 2003 thesis – and it was dismantled by the ministry of education that same day.…

BY CARMEN PAUN, IN BRUSSELS

THE FINAL battle over the proposed European Union (EU) energy efficiency directive will be fought article by article over the next weeks in Brussels, Martin Lidegaard, Denmark’s climate and energy minister said on Thursday. "There’s still a lot of work to be done, a lot of compromises that should be achieved and it will need flexibility from our side, but also from the [European] Parliament and the Commission’s side if we shall succeed in ending [the negotiations for] this directive," Lidegaard told a press conference.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

ROMANIAN pigmeat exporters have been told they can at last allow its pigmeat exporters to sell into the rest of the European Union (EU), lifting a ban existing since Romania joined the EU in January 2007 over swine flu control concerns.…

BY KEITH NUTHALL

THE EUROPEAN Commission has confirmed it is scrapping sugar production quotas across the European Union (EU) in 2015 when proposing a comprehensive reform of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). There have been calls from some member states and MEPs for the quota regime to be renewed, but the Commission has stuck to its guns and will continue with abolition.…