Romania’s state news agency to get under Parliament control

The director of the Romanian public news agency Agerpres can be laid off if the Parliament rejects the institution’s annual activity report, according to a draft law the Senate voted yesterday. The MPs who initiated the draft law wrote that the Agerpres general director “enjoys total immunity within his mandate”. Agerpres is the only institution where the Parliament has no instrument of action if it finds a poor performance, according to the draft law initiators. The culture minister Lucian Romascanu was among those who initiated the bill. The draft law has nothing to do with the person, and is not aimed at anything politically, the minister said. The Parliament rejected at the end of September the Romanian television TVR’s annual report for 2016. The main consequence was that TVR’s board was laid off. TVR president Irina Radu also had to leave the office. Romanian Parliament wants tighter control over state news agency editor@romania-insider.com