Politics Pro-European parties form new government in Romania
Following the parliamentary elections in the EU member state Romania, an alliance of pro-European parties is to form the next government. President Klaus Iohannis commissioned the Social Democrat and current Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to form a cabinet.
23.12.2024, 16:52
SDA
The alliance has the necessary majority in parliament and is ready to form a government, Iohannis announced on Monday after receiving representatives of all parliamentary parties the day before.
The alliance includes Ciolacu's Social Democrats (PSD), the bourgeois PNL, the Party of Ethnic Hungarians (UDMR/RMDSZ) and the parliamentary group of other ethnic minorities. Until now, the Social Democrats have governed in a coalition with the PNL. Eight ministers are to come from the PSD, six from the PNL and two from the UDMR.
The coalition partners also agreed to put forward a joint candidate for the next presidential elections, PNL politician Crin Antonescu. Antonescu, who was leader of the PNL from 2009 to 2014, retired from politics ten years ago and has not held any public office since.
Date for new presidential election still open
The Romanian Constitutional Court had declared the result of the first round of the presidential election invalid and ordered a re-run of the election. In the election round on November 24, the far-right and Russia-friendly candidate Calin Georgescu had surprisingly won first place.
Georgescu had previously come under judicial scrutiny for possible illegal financing of his election campaign. The previously largely unknown right-wing extremist had mainly campaigned on the online platform Tiktok. The Romanian foreign intelligence service SIE assumes that Russian-controlled manipulation contributed to Georgescu's success.
A date for the new presidential election has not yet been set and must be determined by the new government. Ultra-right and far-right parties also made strong gains in the parliamentary elections on December 1. Together, the three parties received almost a third of the vote. The strongest of them, the extreme right-wing AUR, increased its share of the vote from 9% to 18% compared to 2020.
