Romanian President Criticizes Government In Parliament Address For

President Traian Basescu will address the Parliament today with a critical overview on the performance of both the Government and Parliament in advancing Romania’s European Union integration efforts. The Social-Democrat Party, in opposition, is expected to make its own Basescu’s stance and copy-paste it in a motion asking the government to resign.

Basescu’s assessment will be that Romania will indeed join the EU in January 2007, but with a mediocre level of preparedness. To overcome this situation, the country’s public institutions should work better, not wait for someone else to solve their problems, Basescu will say. He will also appeal to the political elite to show solidarity to achieve the accession goal in January 2007.

Basescu timed his parliamentary address to follow the statement of the June European Council and the May European Commission report. And he is not going to congratulate the Government for any of its accomplishments, but point out the failures. For instance, of Romania’s 40 yellow-flagged issues in the October report, the country still had 30 in the May report. Which goes to show the Government did not perform its job, Basescu will say.

The poor management of the bird-flu crisis will also be addressed by Basescu in his parliamentary address, as will the crisis in the health-care system.

He is also expected to give a thumb up to the progress in the justice system, in spite of the fact that the draft law for setting up the office running checks of personal wealth did not make it yet through Parliament.

Basescu will also take on the Government for the lack of investment in infrastructure and the delay in setting up the IT system for assessing the VAT collection, the latter issue still red-flagged in the May EU report.

Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu will not get off the hook this time either. Basescu will again aim at Tariceanu, when ranting against special interest groups running Romania’s economy.

Translated by Anca Paduraru