The Parliament resulted after the elections on December 6, convenes today to validate the list of ministers and the governing program of the Executive to be run by former Finance Minister Florin Cîțu (PNL). The PM specified he wanted the vote in the Parliament to start at 6 p.m. today: ” the oath to follow and then the Executive to meet for a photo session alone”, said Florin Cîțu.
Virgil Popescu, acting minister of Economy, Energy and Business Environment will retain the tasks related to the energy sector by taking over the portfolio at the re-established Ministry of Energy.
Members of the Government
- Florin Cîțu – Prime Minister
- Dan Barna – Deputy Prime Minister
- Kelemen Hunor – Deputy Prime Minister
- Nicolae Ciucă (PNL) – Ministry of National Defence
- Bogdan Aurescu (PNL) – Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Alexandru Nazare (PNL) – Ministry of Public Finance
- Lucian Bode (PNL) – Ministry of Internal Affairs
- Sorin Cîmpeanu (PNL) – Ministry of National Education
- Virgil Popescu (PNL) – Ministry of Energy
- Adrian Oros (PNL) – Ministry of Agriculture
- Bogdan Gheorghiu (PNL) – Ministry of Culture
- Raluca Turcan (PNL) – Ministry of Labor and Social Protection
- Cătălin Drulă (USR PLUS) – Ministry of Transport
- Claudiu Năsui (USR PLUS) – Ministry of economy, Entrepreneurship and Tourism
- Stelian Ion (USR PLUS) – Ministry of Justice
- Cristian Ghinea (USR PLUS) – Ministry of Investment and European Projects
- Vlad Voiculescu (USR PLUS) – Ministry of Health
- Ciprian Teleman (USR PLUS) – Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitization
- Cseke Attila (UDMR) – Ministry of Development, Public works and Administration
- Tanczos Barna (UDMR) – Ministry of Environment, Water and Forests
- Eduard Novak (UDMR) – Ministry of Youth and Sport
The government led by Florin Cîțu counts on the parliamentary support of the coalition formed of PNL, USR PLUS and UDMR (the Democrat Union of Hungarians in Romania). The three pro-European centre-right parties control the Senate, with 75 votes from 136 (41+25+9), and the Chamber of Deputies, with 169 votes from 329 (93+55+21); here they also count on the support of the group of national minorities (18).
PNL was widely expected to win the elections but was beaten by the Social Democrats (PSD) who received 30% of the votes. However, without any coalition partners, the PSD had to hand control over to the centre-right parties to form a government, writes Euronews. The other party in the Parliament is a recently formed populist party the Alliance for Romanian Unity (AUR) which has yet to clarify its ideology. Labeled by analysts as an anti-system, far-right, nationalistic entity, AUR is expected to be a difficult if not impossible partner both for the PNL led coalition, and for the PSD opposition.