Senate president says European politicians have superficial perception about situation in Romania

Politicians in Brussels are superficially informed about the situation in Romania, Senate president Calin Popescu-Tariceanu said after a meeting with leaders of the ALDE group in the European Parliament on Tuesday. “Unfortunately, they have few information and for many of them the perception is based on superficial things (…) Aside from what they read, the news in their phones, they can’t know the situation in Romania in detail,” Tariceanu said, according to local Mediafax. Dutch MEP Matthijs van Miltenburg, a member of the ALDE group, wrote on Twitter on Tuesday that the Romanian Senate president blamed the “shadow state” and the secret services for the rule of law deficiencies in Romania. He added that Tariceanu didn’t come up with concrete answers about solutions to combat corruption in Romania but only smoke screens. The Romanian official, however, said he told the European ALDE members that Romania is somewhere at the middle of the ranking of European countries when it comes to corruption. Tariceanu’s party, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), which is part of the European ALDE group, is part of the ruling coalition in Romania alongside the Social Democratic Party (PSD). The local ALDE has thus been supporting PSD’s initiatives to change the justice laws and criminal codes in Romania, which have raised concerns among politicians in Brussels, who have warned Romania not to adopt legislation to weaken the rule of law. European Parliament may adopt resolution on Romania at end-October editor@romania-insider.com (photo source: Facebook/Calin Popescu Tariceanu)