A Happy and costly New Year

With the new year only barely begun, numerous products are already seeing 5 to 10% price hikes, announces România liberă, which has published a list of the worst affected products: fuels, energy, bread, fruit, vegetables and cigarettes. But the steepest increases will be on meat, with a whopping 50% on beef and mutton and 20 to 30% on poultry. The surge in prices, explains România liberă, is mainly due to the suppression of farming subsidies in accordance with the country's commitments to the Eurpean Union. The newspaper notes that Romanian farmers, who fear that the "market will be unable to adapt," are asking the government to "request a dispensation from Brussels to allow them to continue receiving subsidies."