National Press Review, November 11

Today’s newspapers cover, among other topics, the treaty signed with Syria, Romanian public
transport projects (that need to be worked at and the Romanian Government fails to attract
European funding) and prostitution disguised as ‘honorable’ modeling agencies.

România liberă reads: ‘Omar Hayssam, the main of the treaty signed between Romania and
Syria.’ Sentenced to 20 years of prison in the case of the Romanian journalists kidnapped in
Baghdad, Hayssam will be brought to the country on the basis of a treaty concerning the transfer
of persons who have been given prison sentences that was signed by the Romanian and Syrian
Ministers for Justice. Hayssam could disclose sensational information in many important cases.

Jurnalul Naţional: ‘The Government sits tight on millions of euro.’ The blocks of shares which
the Government holds in almost 400 companies are kept under lock and key. The State Assets
Valorification Authority (AVAS), former State Property Fund (FPS), didn’t have and doesn’t
have any interest in selling its small block of shares because this would lead to the dissolution of
the institution.

Romanian people and Europe covered by Evenimentul Zilei: ‘So far we’ve managed to attract
only 15 % of the post-adherence European funds.’ And the Ministry of Transport has done the
most awful job of attracting European funding. Evenimentul Zilei reads that this ministry is
pulling statistics down, with an absorption rate below 2 % of the allocated money.

The public transport issue covered by Gândul:  after 12 years of continuous work and postponed
deadlines, officials inform us that the A2 highway, that connects Bucharest to Constanţa, will be
finished next year. Only 70 kilometers have been built until now and the highway stops on a hill,
somewhere in Cernavodă. ‘I will go home driving on the highway,’ – Transport Minister Anca
Boagiu declared to Gândul, but the newspaper underlines that the money allocated for building
highways are still an unknown quantity.

All today’s newspapers wrote about the ‘Sex with models’ scandal, in which names of important
billionaire politicians (or vice versa…) figure. Gândul doesn’t resume itself to only presenting
already known information, and poses the following questions: who are the models and what are
modeling agencies hiding? People who are familiar with this subject and who know what they
are talking about claim that there are thousands of such agencies in Romania, many of which
barely disguised brothels. The girls that work here come from poor and/or divorced countryside
families and are brought to Bucharest, in the promise of becoming models. They are practically
choosing between poverty and prostitution.

This article closes with a homage brought to Corneliu Coposu in Adevărul. ‘The last moral
instance of the Romanian people’ or ’one of the fathers of democracy’ – words that rightfully
describe the peasants’ leader – died exactly 15 years ago, on November 11th, 1995.

Translated by: Raluca Mizdrea

MA Student, MTTLC, Bucharest University