🇷🇴🤝🇷🇸 Serbia plans to build jointly with Romania a new hydropower dam on the Danube called "Iron Gates 3"

This was revealed by the Serbian minister of the Mines and Energy Dubravka Đedović Handanović, in a joint press conference with the Romanian ambassador, Silvia Davidoiu.

The new dam will be built in between the Iron Gates 1 and Iron Gates 2 hydropower plants, at the 1007 km mark. The new dam should provide an additional 800 MW/h to the 1605 MW/h already in place from the two existing dams. This would cover 20% of Serbia's electric energy needs.

Serbia and Romania will also build a new gas pipeline. The pipeline will start in Mokrin and will reach Timișoara.

🔗 https://www.profit.ro/povesti-cu-profit/energie/serbia-si-romania-planuiesc-sa-construiasca-portile-de-fier-3-constructia-una-din-cele-mai-mari-din-regiune-declarata-de-importanta-deosebita-de-catre-guvernul-serbiei-21600494

🇷🇴🤝🇷🇺🌐 A Romanian man was arrested by Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) earlier today being accused of espionage on behalf of Russia.

Alexandru Piscan was caught filming a military convoy and other military installations near the city of Tulcea, 7 km away from the Ukrainian border and 18 km away from the city of Izmail (Ukraine).

Piscan then sent the videos and photos to employees of the Russian embassy in Bucharest which warranted his arrest. A judge gave an order to detain him further for another 30 days being considered at risk of flight.

The Romanian foreign minister, Luminița Odobescu, has decided to expel an employee of the Russian embassy following this incident, the one suspected to have received the videos and images captured by the amateur spy.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🇷🇴⚠️📈 At the end of March 2024, the Romanian government already recorded a 2% budget deficit, a deficit way bigger than expected.

The Romanian government overspent by 36 billion Romanian lei, or 2% of the expected GDP of 1.700 billion Romanian lei (~340 billion EURs). If the government continues to spend at this rate, it will be impossible to reach the 5% deficit target.

Prime minister, Marcel Ciolacu and finance minister, Marcel Boloș, defended this overspending by blaming recent military acquisitions and infrastructure related spending which were scheduled to be paid this year according to the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).

In regards to the military spending, that is simply false:

🔸 Romanian military spending has been on the decline since 2020 !! Yes, military spending is up, but only by 10% compared to the first three months of 2023 and it is mostly represented by delayed acquisitions which should've been done in the last months of 2023.If anything, Romania is behind its defense spending target.

🔸 Infrastructure spending has increased by 7% and, worth remembering that some of these funds are not actually coming from the coffers of the ministry of finances but rather from Brussels.

🔸 Actual overspending comes from salary and goods & services which rose by 20%, 9% bigger than the predicted spending.

🔗 https://www.zf.ro/eveniment/de-unde-vine-deficitul-bugetar-record-din-primul-trimestru-din-2024-22384135

🇷🇴🪧⚡️ Over the last couple of weeks, discontent among employees in several institutions led to minor strikes, all complaining about poor working conditions and low salaries.

📌 The strikes reunited employees of the central administration apparatus, museum employees, and a number of ministries and their subordinate agencies.

♦️ Recently the government decided to raise by 10% the salaries of some of its employees working in diplomacy, part of the public administration apparatus, the National Commerce Register Office (ONRC) and other institutions financed directly, partly or without any government subsidies but are in the subordination of the government. There will be a 5% raise before the June 9th elections and another 5% raise in the autumn, so a lot of people are still unhappy.

♦️ Current inflation rates are the biggest factor in these strikes, as the currency loses its purchasing power, retailers, anyone offering services of any kind have to keep up with this loss of purchasing power but the salaries remain stagnant and the Romanian government still is incapable to accurately predict its salary associated costs despite being the biggest employer in the country overall through all of its institutions and agencies.

🎙 Now, the prime-minister, Marcel Ciolacu, made his own threat of laying off those that are unhappy with the working conditions or their pay and giving raises to "only those that deserve them"

📌 This is a complex problem as the Romanian government cannot afford the salary raises demanded by its employees, but it cannot also raise the taxes, partly due to electoral concerns and even if it did, they will enter in force 6 months after being approved by the Parliament. So, the government gives a token raise to some but this will only anger those that did not get such a raise, because you cannot simply raise the salaries of just one branch of the government without giving something to the others.

♦️ The "budgetarians" as how the people employed directly by the government and its subordinate institutions are labelled, are well coordinated and when a certain group goes on strike, the others press their demands and then threaten to strike and if the government doesn't concede by now, they will join the strike.

@Wallachian_Gazette

🚢🇹🇿🇷🇴 A week after the Tanzanian ship, Mohammad Z, sunk off the coast of Romania, there are more questions than answers.

3 of the 11 crew have died in this accident. Preliminary investigations revealed that the ship sank not because it struck a loose mine but because it collided with another ship, Michel, which after ramming the Tanzanian vessel, carried on her journey to the Bulgarian port of Varna.

The route of the ship that sank is unclear. Although it was supposed to arrive at the Romanian port of Sulina, it was far away from the shore, some 14 miles outside the territorial waters of Romania (the first 12 nautical miles from the shore are considered territorial waters per the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) and sank some 26 miles off the small port of Sfântu Gheorghe, a big distance for a ship that was supposed to stop at Sulina. We also have no idea what cargo was the ship, Mohammad Z, transporting.

These missing pieces of informations as well as the ships position when it sank suggest that it was not heading towards Romania but rather to one of Ukraine's Danubian ports. It would have needed to cross the Bystroye Canal and then into the Chilia(Kilia) branch and then reach its destination.

The Bystroye Canal is a point of controversy between Bucharest and Kiev because, from the point of view of international law, Romania has exclusive rights to commercial shipping on the Danube through the Sulina Canal, also a natural branch of the Danube. The canal was widened by the British in the 1870s and once Romania took control of the area after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 it became the preferred way for ships to enter and leave the Danube as the Sfântu Gheorghe branch was narrow and ships risked getting stuck and the Chilia branch which formed the border with Russia at the time, represented a longer route.

The Bystroye Canal was built by the USSR in the 1950s to shorten the way between the USSR's (now Ukraine's) ports on the Danube and the Black Sea. However, the Soviets relatively quickly abandoned the canal due to how quick the Danube would silt the area meaning that constant maintenance was needed so the canal was unprofitable. After Ukrainian independence, Kiev set out to rebuild the canal and, to crush the competition from Romania, sank the Rostock ship in the Sulina Canal in 1991. The Sulina canal would be open again in 2004 with tens of millions of USDs in revenue lost to Ukraine who charged vessels more on the Bystroye Canal due to the high maintenance required.

In 2022 the Bystroye Canal became important again as ships could not reach Odessa, Nikolaev and other ports in Ukraine besides Chilia(Kilia) and Izmail without coming under fire from Russian bombs or hitting Ukrainian naval mines. Due to foreign pressure, Bucharest ignored the dredging work done by Kiev who deepened the canal allowing heavier ships to enter the Danube but this situation cannot go on forever. Sulina's traffic has decreased meanwhile the traffic on Bystroye has increased. Bucharest is losing revenue for Ukraine for nothing in return. Add to this environmental concerns regarding the flow of the Danube which tends to concentrate in the northern Chilia branch, even more now that the Bystroye canal was dug up and deepened allowing for more water to flow into the Black Sea and Romania could lose not just the shipping but also the Danube Delta itself.

🔗 https://www.dw.com/ro/ucraina-b%C3%AEstroe-nava-scufundat%C4%83-%C8%99i-interesul-rom%C3%A2niei/a-69130028