MEP Siegfried Muresan, vice-president of the European People's Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament, believes that the absence of a fully empowered government in Romania is making it harder to pass the reforms needed for the country to receive the final instalments from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR).
During a meeting with a group of Romanian journalists in Strasbourg, Muresan answered a question regarding the chances of Romania's Parliament adopting the unified pay law, one of the key milestones in the PNRR. Romania risks losing approximately 770 million euros if this milestone is not fulfilled.
"If Romania had had a fully empowered government, the government could have done more through emergency ordinances. Now, since the government can no longer issue emergency ordinances, all it can do is come forward with draft laws and the ball is then in Parliament's court. As such, everything depends on the PSD-AUR [Social Democratic Party-Alliance for Romanians' Union] majority. At present, the PSD-AUR majority has removed the government's ability to issue emergency ordinances and resolve problems quickly. Therefore, the only ones who can solve these problems are those holding the majority in Parliament. Yes, I believe that the existence of a government without full powers, which cannot issue emergency ordinances, makes it more difficult to adopt the reforms necessary to receive the final instalments from the PNRR," the liberal MEP said.
The EPP vice-president also spoke about the possibility of early elections in Romania.
"In recent years, these elections have never materialised. However, the current situation is as follows: in Romania's Parliament there is a majority which clearly wants to keep the state captive, opposes reforms and no longer reflects the will of the people. The majority of Romanians want modernisation, reforms and European integration. All presidential elections in Romania since 2004 have been won with this majority. PSD, the party opposing modernisation and reform, has won parliamentary elections, but has never obtained more than 50% plus one of the votes. In other words, people want modernisation and reform, while the current parliamentary majority no longer matches their expectations," Siegfried Muresan stressed.
According to him, Social Democratic leader Sorin Grindeanu wants "to do with a technocratic prime minister exactly what Liviu Dragnea did with Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu: to have a straw prime minister who implements the party's agenda and, if he does not implement it, to replace him after six months."
Muresan added that the only party currently afraid of early elections is PSD.
"We do not blame people for the choices they make. We try to understand them and we realise that some of the people who voted for populist, Eurosceptic parties in the latest round of elections had legitimate concerns and grievances, caused in part by injustices in society. We believe that correcting these injustices in society is the best way to reduce the populist and extremist wave in Romania," the EPP MEP also said.
