Eurasia Press & News
Iohannis, the first ethnic German to be elected president of Romania, has long been seen as a close ally of Angela Merkel in EU summits.
He has so far been silent on the results of the German elections, as well as the vast majority of his allies. PNL, the center-right party that supported Iohannis in the presidential elections, has its own political crisis to handle at home, as it faces a no confidence vote in the parliament on Tuesday.
Siegfried Muresan, a Romanian MEP and vice-chair of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, conceded the loss of the German conservatives for the first time since 2002 but said he still hopes the CDU will be a part of the government. Muresan said a coalition between CDU and SPD is possible but unlikely.
More likely, he said, is that there will be a coalition with the two smaller parties, the Greens and the liberal FDP.
“The question is who will convince both parties to form a coalition with them,” Muresan noted.
“For Romania and the entire EU, it is essential that Europe’s largest member state will be led by a stable and coherent government,” Muresan said, adding that his own preference would be a government led by a right-wing chancellor.
On the other hand, Romanian socialists were quick to hail SPD’s victory.
“I congratulate Olaf Scholz and the German Social Democrats for their huge victory in the federal election,” wrote Marcel Ciolacu, the president of Romania’s socialist party PSD, on Facebook.
“The left-wing has a real chance to lead Germany’s destiny over the next years and return a social and human dimension to Europe,” Ciolacu added. Read more.
Victor Negrescu, an MEP from PSD, said the results in Germany showed that the left is gaining ground across the bloc.
“The result in Germany, like in Norway, confirms that our fight for a modern left is right. Social democrats across Romania should be convinced that we are on the right track across Europe. We will continue the work of PES activists for a Romanian left that prioritises citizens,” Negrescu said.
However, Romanian social democrats do not seem to be fully aligned with their EU political family.
Relations between Romania’s PSD and the S&D group in the European Parliament do not seem to be fully fixed, after the Party of European Socialists (PES) froze relations with the Romanian party due to rule of law issues back in 2019.
At the time, the PSD government attempted to push forward major changes to justice legislation which were heavily criticised by the European Commission and other international institutions for weakening the fight against corruption.
After Liviu Dragnea, the president of PSD and the mastermind behind the attempt to change the laws, was jailed in May 2019 with corruption charges, relations between PSD and PES were partly recovered.
However, Romanian social democrats are still far from having the same progressive agenda as some of their counterparts in Europe.
For example, two weeks ago, PSD MEPs were the only members of the S&D group who voted against the EU Parliament’s resolution on the LGBTIQ community rights.
