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President Klaus Iohannis said on Friday that the ruling party is using a Europhobic speech in the EP election campaign, deeming it as "condemnable, reprehensible."
"I have been hearing a political speech lately - I am casually telling you, out of the context of the electoral campaign - abject. Some of the Romanian politicians are going about the country saying that our problems come from Brussels or another one says, "Siree, we have nothing against the EU, but it is not well headed from Brussels and all those in Brussels including President Iohannis must disappear because they don't belong there. I have found out that there has arisen in Europe not a eurosceptic speech, it would have been okay if it had been eurosceptic, you could say you agreed with some things, with others not, but a Europhobic speech, and the fact that this speech has been transformed into the main message of the campaign for European Parliament elections by the Romanian ruling party, seems to me to be absolutely condemnable, reprehensible, but we can see that Euroscepticism has appeared to a great extent because of such populists who go to Brussels and there they all are Europeans without distinction, everybody, they are all pro-European and have a bombastic European speech, and as soon as they come home they put the blame for all their failures and non-achievements on Brussels," Iohannis said at the launch of the volume" EU.RO - An Open Dialogue on Europe" that took place at the Conference Center of the Polytechnic University of Timisoara.
He emphasized that this discourse can be combated through information.
In Klaus Iohannis's opinion, an extremely poor option is for citizens not to turn out vote in the European Parliament election.
"If we forget to talk about democracy then we lose it. (...) Now we can go to choose those who present a better option. Do you know the only exceptionally poor option - not to go [to vote - ed.n.]," the president said.
