Who will Romania’s new Government nominate as European commissioner?

The nomination of a new European commissioner is one of the priorities of the new Romanian Government led by Ludovic Orban and some commentators speculate that this was also the main reason why the new Government passed the vote in the Parliament on Monday.

Romania is the only EU country that hasn’t nominated a valid candidate for the new European Commission led by Ursula von der Leyen and further delay in sending this nomination would have made it impossible for the new commission to be voted by the European Parliament and start its mandate by the end of this year. Thus, the EC president-elect urged the Romanian Government and president to reach an agreement and send a nomination that would be accepted by the European Parliament as soon as possible. However, such an agreement would have been impossible to reach as long as former prime minister Viorica Dancila was still in office, given that she and president Klaus Iohannis both run in the presidential elections at the end of this week and have attacked each other aggressively over the recent weeks.

After Romania’s first commissioner candidate, MEP Rovana Plumb, was rejected by the European Parliament for possible conflict of interests, and the second nomination sent by prime minister Viorica Dancila, MEP Dan Nica, was not accepted by EC president-elect Ursula von der Leyen, president Iohannis urged Dancila not to send a new nomination and leave this to the new Government. And yet, the dismissed PM proposed former European affairs minister Victor Negrescu for the job, again without consulting anyone. Iohannis harshly criticized Dancila for this initiative arguing that she didn’t have the right to send another commissioner candidate after her Government was dismissed by the Parliament. So, von der Leyen ignored this proposal as well and once again asked Romania to send a valid candidate as soon as possible.

The endorsement of the Orban cabinet solves that problem and Romania could send its nomination as soon as Wednesday. PM Orban and president Iohannis have already talked about this and the likely candidate will be liberal MEP Siegfried Muresan, liberal sources told EurActiv Romania. Orban also promised he would consult the Romanian Parliament’s specialty committees on the nomination before sending it to von der Leyen.

Siegfried Muresan (opening photo), 38, is currently at his second mandate in the European Parliament. He is one of the most active and influential Romanian MEPs and a vicepresident of the European popular Party (EPP) group in the European Parliament. One of his most important assignments as MEP was as chief negotiator of the European Parliament for the EU Budget in 2018.