Citu: Prime minister told me that he had sent his doctoral dissertation to certify not plagiarized

The President of the Senate, the liberal leader Florin Citu, declared on Tuesday evening that the Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca informed him that he sent his doctoral thesis, for verification, to a commission to certify that it is not plagiarized.

"Today, the Prime Minister was in the meeting of the National Liberal Party (PNL) Executive Bureau and he himself took the floor and presented the situation. He told me that he had sent the work for verification, on his own initiative, to a commission to certify that it is not plagiarism," Citu said on the Digi 24 television station.

Asked if this issue is not a vulnerability for the PNL, Citu answered no, but stressed that it is Nicolae Ciuca's duty to clarify this subject "very quickly".

The Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca requested the analysis of his doctoral dissertation, presented in 2003, entitled "The dimension of the Romanian army's engagement in multinational joint operations", by the Ethics Commission of the National Defence University (UNAp), the institution organizing his doctoral studies where he presented the thesis.

According to the Prime Minister, the choice of the doctoral thesis topic was predominantly based on personal experience gained in international missions in which he participated directly, individually or together with the 26th Infantry Battalion: UN peacekeeping mission in Angola (1996-1997), NATO mission within SACEUR Strategic Reserve for the Western Balkans (2000-2001) and the Coalition Mission in Afghanistan (2002).

An investigation published by pressone.ro claims that Nicolae Ciuca's thesis, based on which he became a PhD in military sciences in 2003, includes plagiarized content in at least 42 pages out of a total of 138.