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Prime Minister Viorica Dancila believes that President Iohannis's statements about the draft budget for 2019 and his decision to challenge it with the Constitutional Court are of a political nature and that he is already campaigning.
"For me it's clear - these are political statements, he is campaigning and I will only give you one example: he made the same statements before we took over the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union. Back then he said we weren't ready and that the Romanian presidency of the Council of the European Union will be a mediocre one and we won't have any results. The reality contradicted him. In no more than two months, Romania concluded more files than the Austrian presidency did in six months. The Austrian presidency concluded 53 files during its entire mandate, while Romania has already concluded 56 files, in less than two months. We managed to conclude all these files and to hold trialogues on very difficult files - and I mean here the Gas Directive or the one on copyright," the PM said at the end of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) National Standing Bureau meeting on Monday.
She also enumerated the "good things" brought by this government, such as the increase in salaries and investments in the rural environment, through the PNDL (national local development programme). Dancila said that, if the President had made concrete reproaches, he would have tried to check "if what he said was according to reality," and he would have taken the necessary measures.
"But we all saw that they were only political statements and that, in fact, he places the political game and personal interest above Romanians and Romania. And this cannot be accepted, at least in my opinion. For all these reach further than our own borders; we are holding now the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union and everything is now of interest outside our country. We see, on one hand, the President of Romania who says that this government has done nothing good and it's not good and we see afterwards the First Vice President of the European Commission Frans Timmermans saying that the Romanian Government scored very good economic results and took good measures for the citizens. So I believe these statements are contradictory and they aren't based on anything concrete, so that they only do harm to Romania and are part of a political game," specified the PM.
PM Dancila also denied that the adoption of Government Emergency Ordinance 7/2019, which modifies justice laws, damaged in any way the image of the Romanian presidency of the Council of the EU.
"I had numerous meetings in Madrid, both with former colleagues from the European Parliament, members of the European Commission, my counterparts from Malta, Portugal and Spain, and they all appreciated the manner in which Romania approached the rotating presidency. I believe this concerns only us, for we always want to discuss justice and nothing else but justice, while we are ignoring aspects that are far more important than our country. No, this ordinance did not harm Romania's image, not at all, and it won't shadow the results obtained by the rotating presidency either, because they are concrete results. Political statements cannot shadow concrete results, I believe," said Viorica Dancila.
