Romanian EU funds minister resigns to run in December elections

Romanian EU funds minister Cristian Ghinea announced on Wednesday that he would resign from this position. According to the local media, Ghinea plans to join the Save Romania Union (USR) party and run in the parliamentary elections to be organized in Romania on December 11. USR, formed and led by Romanian mathematician and activist Nicusor Dan, managed last week to gather the 200,000 signatures needed to participate in the elections. Cristian Ghinea took over as EU funds minister in April 2016. In his six-month mandate, he has made efforts to unlock the EU fund programmes for the 2014-2020 period. He was also one of the most vocal members of the Ciolos cabinet and had a clash on Facebook with Romanian European Comissioner for Regional Development Corina Cretu on Romania's EU funds abrosption rate. “My last meeting as a member of the Ciolos 1 Government. It’s a strange feeling. It feels like a century, although less than six months have passed since I took over the Ministry, and less than a year since I went to the Chancellery. It has been intense. And it's been an honor!,” Ghinea wrote on his Facebook page. “Something else begins today,” the message ends. USR is to make public the list of people who will run in the parliamentary elections today, October 26. Nicusor Dan said in a Facebook message that he would present today “the members of the Ciolos cabinet who will run for USR in the parliamentary elections.” This could mean that other ministers from the Government led by Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos may join USR and run in the elections. Manuel Costescu, the state secretary responsible for foreign investment in the Romanian Government, has also resigned earlier this month to run in the parliamentary elections for USR. Meanwhile, earlier this week, the National Liberal Party (PNL) announced that Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos would be the party’s nomination for PM after the parliamentary elections in December. USR also announced that it would support Dacian Ciolos for a new mandate as Prime Minister after the elections. Ciolos previously announced that he would not join any political party nor run in the coming elections, and asked his ministers to resign from the Government if they plan to enter the elections. PM Dacian Ciolos launches his platform for Romania aiming to get support for a new mandate Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com