Romania Political Briefing: Further Tensions on the Political Scene Oana Cristina Popovici

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 7, No. 1 (RO)

May 2018

Romania Political briefing: Further tensions on the political scene Oana Cristina Popovici

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu Further tensions on the political scene

The political turmoil seems to continue even after the installation of the third Government from the part of the actual coalition, which holds the majority in the Romanian Parliament. Moreover, the tensions between the President and the Government escalated in the last period. While protests related to the Government measures took place again in the month of May, the coalition parties announce a large political rally for the support of the actual Government. The lately changes of the political membership of some of the Members of the Parliament started to put some pressure on the Government, but the success of a censure motion against it is still reduced.

At the end of April, the President demanded the resignation of Viorica Dăncilă from the post of Prime Minister, on the presumption that she cannot deal with such a position. The announcement was made after the Prime-Minister refused to meet the invitation received for participating to a meeting in which the President intended to mediate the tensioned conflict between the Government and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the National Bank of Romania (NBR). At that point, the two institutions accused each other for conducting or supporting vicious monetary policies. The Government was considering that the NBR had to deal with rising inflation, as its level was of 5% at the beginning of March, therefore the pressures of SDP on the NBR started to grow. At the same time, the interest rates for the loans started to increase and the NBR was confronted with a liquidity shortage of the banking system and an increase in the ROBOR rate, which represents the average interest rate on the loans granted in lei on the interbank market. The central bank pointed to the Government for a faulty payment policy, while the Government showed back, arguing that the interest rates are under the monitoring of NBR. While the conflict escalated, the President emphasized that NBR is a political independent

1 institution, which is an essential condition for being member of the EU, and that the ruling party should not question this independence. Under these auspices, the representatives of the Government and of the NBR were invited for a meeting, but the Prime Minister refused to come. This situation was further inflated by the fact that, in addition, in the same period, the SDP leader, Liviu Dragnea, announced that the Government discussed a document related to the transfer of the Romanian embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, without involving the President, who is the responsible for the external policy. Accompanied by the Prime-Minister, the two had a visit to Israel without informing the President. After only two weeks, the President reiterated his request and demanded the urgent resignation of Prime Minister Viorica Dancila after the Ministry of Finance published the budget execution report for the first quarter of 2018. The official figures pointed to a drop in the fiscal revenues as compared to the previous year, weak achievements in absorbing the EU funds and a performance generally situated below the aims established by SDP in its governance programme. Instead, the increase of total expenses by 22% as compared with 2017 puts pressure on the budget and risks to endanger the compliance with the limits of the budgetary deficit. The President draws the attention that it is difficult to lower the taxes, on one hand, and to increase the spending on wages and pensions, on the other hand, while guaranteeing other public investments in roads, motorways, hospitals or schools. The general message was that although Romania registered a very high economic growth, it cannot be found in the income of the population, nor in the state budget. Until now, the request of the President remained at the level of a political statement, given that the Prime-Minister is not considering the option of resignation and the parliamentary majority does not withdraw its support. New protests emerged as a result of such situations in Bucharest and in several cities in the countries in mid-May. The people accused the government coalition of failing to honour the promises made in the election campaign and of

2 moving Romania away from the democratic standards supported by the EU. Although it gathered an important number of people, the breadth of the protest was not similar with the ones in February 2017. In the meantime, the opposition seems to be determined to launch a censure motion against the Prime-Minister, which could lead to her demission. The censure motion is estimated to be launched in mid-June and it will mostly include elements from the areas of economy and the justice, the two domains that have been significantly criticized in the last period. At the moment, such an initiative has minimal chances of success and was permanently postponed due to the fact that SDP has the majority in the Parliament. But several important changes seem to make vulnerable the coalition parties. The president of the largest opposition party in Romania, the National Liberal Party (NLP), filed a criminal complaint against the Prime Minister and the president of SDP just two weeks ago. The Prime-Minister is accused of visiting Israel on behalf of Romania, without a mandate granted by the President in this respect. Based on this, the prime minister may be charged with the “usurpation of the office”, according to the criminal code. The NLP leader further accuses that, through the adoption of the Memorandum related to the movement of the Romanian Embassy in Israel, Romania’s foreign policy relations with the partners in the European Union, with Palestine and in general with the Arab states was affected. Moreover, in case that the embassy will not be finally moved, the prejudice could also be created in relation to the state of Israel, as a result of the non-honouring of promises made by the Prime Minister of Romania. In addition, the leader also complains that the Memorandum was illegally adopted by the Government, which is an attribute of the President. In addition, one of the former Prime Ministers, Victor Ponta, a member of SDP, decided to withdraw from the party and to make its own parliamentary group, called Pro Romania. Ponta announced only one week ago his intention of forming a new party, separated from SDP, more close to the EU, which criticize the directions of the actual SDP. Several resignations have been announced from

3 SDP, and people with former important positions showed the support and joined with the initiative of Victor Ponta, such as former ministers and other actual members of the Parliament. Such a change comes at a time when the opposition actors seem to have regrouped and started to put more pressure on the actual government: the NLP is threatening with a censure motion, its leader advanced a criminal complaint on behalf of the prime minister, the former Prime-Minister Dacian Ciolos has launched a new party and the other opposition party, the Union Save Romania (USR) – newer and less known –, is more and more present in the parliamentary debate. The initiative seems to have started to destabilise the coalition, but no clear cut conclusion could be drawn, as the events are still developing. For example, as five SDP deputies have passed in the formation of Victor Ponta, Pro Romania, the coalition lost its majority in the Chamber of Deputies. Such movements tend to increase the chances of the censure motion for dismissing the Government lead by Viorica Dancila. Still, the situation was soon recalibrated by other movements between smaller opposition parties and SDP. In order to pass their censure motion, the opposition still need more than 50 votes for forming a majority. Intense negotiations are carried out with the members of the Parliament who form the majority of government with the objective of urging them to vote for the motion. On the other hand, representatives of the SDP announced that a political rally will be held in Bucharest to support the Dancila cabinet in June, similar actions being organised in other cities in Romania. The argument for such an event is that SDP cannot accept the attacks of the opposition, especially since the measures taken by the Government are for the benefit of the population. Moreover, the actions of the opposition are seen as undermining the parliamentary majority and represent an attempt for overthrowing the Government. The SDP members consider that there is a feeling of frustration among people related to the recent events, and the public opinion would not be conducive to actions aimed at the fall of the Government. SDP organizations in

4 the countries responded rapidly to such an initiative, announcing their support; the representative of one county even show its disposal of sending up to 3,000 persons in Bucharest. While the date for the political rally is still not clear, it could overlap with the date for the mass meeting for the support of the traditional family, which was several times postponed. In these conditions, the objective of the meeting is possible not to be well understood.