President Iohannis deems budget good enough to promulgate; party subsidies decrease

President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday about an amendment to the Budget Law under which the Pro Romania party receives public subsidies that he considered the piece of legislation good enough to be promulgated.

"Promulgation is not possible with objections. It is something that is either done or not done. (...) I believe the budget is good enough to be promulgated and I considered that urgent promulgation is needed. You know very well that I promulgated the budget on the first day when that was possible. And regarding pubic funding for the political parties, I saw that the way the parties are financed has changed, and on that I would have two observations. The first would be that, all considered, public subsidies for the parties have decreased. (...) Which is fair, because the subsidies came to be a little too large. Secondly, the old formula would mainly benefit the PSD [Social Democratic Party], who would get outrageously large subsidies as we all know; under the new formula in the latest budget law PSD loses public funding, and that, from my point of view, is not regrettable," said Iohannis, at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

He was asked if it seemed right for Pro Romania to receive public funding. "It is an approach that was negotiated on the passage of the budget law and, after I promulgated it, you can see that I have accepted it as it came for promulgation," Iohannis replied.

He was also questioned about former PSD and Pro Romania members joining PNL.

"It is obvious that there were politicians who actively supported the efforts of the National Liberal Party and I think it is equally evident that those things were done on the basis of political negotiations, which now ended with the actions we can all see," he said.