Romanian Senate Allows State-Owned News Agency Rompres To Go Back To Communist-Era Name

The Romanian Senate in plenary session Tuesday adopted 41 to five votes and ten abstentions an amendment to the law regulating the state-owned news agency Rompres, allowing it to go back to its old name, Agerpres.

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According to the draft’s initiators, going back to the name of Agerpres is motivated by the “long tradition, of over 50 years, of the Agerpres name".

The report drafted by the Senate’s commission for culture states the management of the state owned news agency attended the talks and agreed to change the name of the media outlet.

The government, however, rejected the legislative proposal citing the fact that “solutions alluding to institutions that belonged to Romania’s former communist regime may have negative connotations”.

During debates in the plenary session, senator Eugen Mihaescu of the far-right Greater Romania Party, or PRM, said the government shouldn’t have rejected the initiative just because it goes back to a name used in the communist era.

"As long as we have former communists for foreign ministers, I don’t see why Rompres can’t go back to what it was, and that is Agerpres," Mihaescu said.

Draft initiators consider Rompres should be allowed to go back to the name it had between 1949-1990, especially considering that none of the news agencies in former communist countries changed their names after 1989.

The initiative is pending debates in the Chamber of Deputies which is the decision factor in the matter.

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