President says Romania will hold parliamentary elections in December

The parliamentary elections were established according to the law, and they will be held on December 6, president Klaus Iohannis said during a press conference on October 19.

He was asked whether the elections would still be held given the current increase in coronavirus cases that Romania is experiencing and the support of some parties for their postponement.

"The parliamentary elections were established according to the law and will take place on December 6. As far as the management of the pandemic is concerned, the Parliament approved a special law, Law 55, outlining the entire set of measures that can be taken, and the Government and the local authorities are managing this process," the president explained.

The question came as Marcel Ciolacu, the leader of the Social Democrat Party (PSD), argued the president should hold talks to set a date for the parliamentary elections. Ciolacu previously argued that the elections should be deferred once the country registers more than 4,000 daily coronavirus cases, which happened starting October 14.

Last week, the country's Constitutional Court (CCR) ruled that the Government's decision to schedule the general elections on December 6 becomes void once the draft law with amendments to the Electoral Law comes into force. The draft law, promoted by PSD and passed by its parliamentary majority, had been referred by president Iohannis to the Constitutional Court.

During the same press conference, the president also said a reform of the Constitution section concerning CCR was needed. He argued that the focus should be on the justice laws first, but a reform of the CCR section was "definitely" needed.

"Definitely, we need to focus, when speaking of legislation, firstly on the justice laws, which need to be amended. This is the phase we're at now. But we could all see that a modernization of the Constitution is needed. We had situations that had no simple constitutional solutions, some did not have any solutions – just to remind you of the situation of the early elections, which would have been very useful in bringing in a new Government, a new Parliament, newly validated by citizens, in this very complicated period. It was not possible, and definitely, when the Constitution will be updated, there is a need to update the chapter concerning the Constitutional Court," he said.

RO president says “elections must be held” despite complicated sanitary situation