NEWS OF THE DAY - AUGUST 26

*Prime Minister Victor Ponta says a 2005 law on restitution of real estate properties confiscated by the communist regime was the worst harm ever done to Romania. Speaking at the ?Romania TV' station on Monday night, Ponta asserted the law drafted by then-minister of justice Monica Macovei resulted in many illegal restitutions, for which some judges are also culpable, as proven by investigations of the National Anticorruption Directorate.

*The Romanian state reserves the right of postponing the implementation of the schedule for the liberalization of the natural gas price for households until a dispute with the European Commission is settled; therefore, this price will not increase on October 1 as previously scheduled, the Department of Energy informed in a release.

A governmental delegation led by the minister for energy Razvan Niculescu participated in consultations with representatives of the Directorate-General for Energy of the European Commission on Monday; the talks concerned national and regional topics of the natural gas industry.

*The Government at the meeting on Tuesday is going to approve on a draft resolution concerning the approval of the budget and the necessary expense structure for the preparation, organisation and conduct of presidential election in 2014, the Government Press Office informs.

Several other draft resolutions on the presidential election this year will also be adopted at the same Government meeting.

* Chairman of the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) Kelemen Hunor believes that Romania needs a new Constitution and stated that the Constitutional Court of Romania's (CCR) ruling regarding the Constitution revision project shows that "there is no use to just patch up the...