MUMBAI: Euronews South Africa has appointed Romanian journalist Lucian Sârb as director - news and programmes. Sârb will assume charge from 4 May onwards.

With 15 years’ experience in journalism, Sârb will take over as head of the editorial department and the 350 staff journalists comprising the eight language teams of Euronews.

The channel broadcasts simultaneously in Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. Additionally, the Turkish language broadcast is also in line-up and will be up by January 2010.

Sârb began working for TVR (Televiziunea Româna), the Romanian public broadcaster and shareholder of Euronews, in 1994.

During his stint with TVR, Sârb was instrumental in organising a project between Euronews and TVR to launch the first daily news programme of Euronews in Romanian, in 2004, broadcast on the channel TVR2.

He was also a member of the executive committee newsgroup of the European Broadcasting Union.