Romanian Parliament structure: technical studies, few women and lower than expected re-election rate

The re-election rate in the Romanian parliament is not as high as expected, while political parties fail to promote women and most MPs have qualifications in the more technical university subjects, found a recent study by Romanian Institute for Public Policies. Engineers, economists lawyers and paralegals make up the bulk of MPs in the current Romanian Parliament, Romania's largest so far, and over a half of the members are new to the Parliament, according to the recent study. The number may seem high, but it was even higher in 2008, when 61 percent of the MPs were new to the parliament. As many as 210 deputies and 102 senators had never been Members of the Parliament before. There was a slight shift in the qualifications held by MPs; in the previous legislature, most of the MPs were lawyers, paralegals and notaries. Around 20 percent of the MPs who were re-elected in 2012 chose to represent a different constituency than in their previous mandate, while 27 of the 276 re-elected MPs chose to join a different party from their term in office. The average age in the Romanian Parliament is 48 for the Chamber of deputies, with the youngest there being 25 - Elena Cătălina Ștefănescu, from the Social Democratic Party, while the average for the Senate is 51, the youngest Senator being 36 - Cristian Daniel Florian, from the Democratic Liberal Party. Only 12 percent of the MP seats are occupied by women, which is however higher than in the previous Parliament structure, mostly due to the increase in the total number of MPs by a third. There are 55 women among the 412 deputies, and 12 women among the 176 senators. Dividing parliament by political party and group , the governing coalition the Social Liberal Union (USL) and the minorities have 70 percent – 413 MPs, a wide majority, while the opposition has 175 seats. Romanians elected their MPs on December 9 last year, when the USL won the majority of the votes. editor@romania-insider.com