President Klaus Iohannis appointed the former European Commissioner Dacian Cioloș, president of USR, to try and lead a new executive. USR is the only party among the three main parliamentary groups that has advanced a name for the position of head of government. Dacian Cioloș has 10 days to obtain the support of the majority of parliamentarians – the first analyzes indicate that he has minimal chances to become prime minister again, after his first mandate, from 2015 to 2017, given that immediately after his appointment, PNL, PSD and AUR announced that they would not support him.
Along with Dacian Cioloș’s proposal, USR also published a set of proposals for a government program focused on the commitments in the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP, PNNR in Romanian). “The PNRR+ government should have as a red line the reforms agreed in the PNRR and the political will of the partners to change Romania”, specifies the document structured in four parts:
- Health crisis – urgent measures to manage the pandemic
- Energy price crisis
- Coalition Arrears – Measures agreed in the December 2020 government program outstanding / blocked in implementation and to be resumed
- Major reforms and investments included in NPPR and ways of implementation in the USR vision
USR proposes 4 urgent measures and 10 long-term policies to rebalance energy prices. In the short term, four measures with financial impact are advanced:
- reduction of VAT from 19% to 5% for electricity and natural gas for domestic and non-domestic consumers for a period of 6 months
- temporary grants for CHPs
- tax credit for businesses in the amount of half of the increase in the energy and gas bills
- exemption from the payment of green certificates in the household consumer’s invoice
In the long run, the access to the over 10 billion euros from the Modernization Fund, European money, to be invested in new production capacities available for Romania and the decoupling of state energy companies are considered.
USR aims to allow long-term bilateral contracts and eliminate bureaucracy on the use of agricultural land to unlock investments in new renewable production capacities, as well as unblocking the “Casa Verde Fotovoltaice” program and stimulating Romanians to become prosumers. The reform of the Oltenia Energy Complex and the completion of the Iernut gas power plant by Romgaz are two other actions meant to increase the internal electricity production capacity. For the first time in a political program appears the idea of eliminating the OPCOM monopoly as an exchange market for electricity trading.
Finally, the Black Sea is targeted in the USR’s governing program with the exploitation of deep-sea gas fields, which depends on the amendment of the offshore law, and with investments in offshore wind projects, which require the construction of an administrative and legislative framework.
Beyond personal adversities, the governing plan includes measures clearly rejected by the only governing partners with whom USR (16,6% of the parliamentary seats) has announced that it will negotiate. The National Liberal Party (PNL – 28%), apparently encouraged by President Klaus Iohannis, rejected the idea of eliminating the Section for the Investigation of Crimes in Justice (SIIJ). The same position was expressed by the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR – 6%), whose parliamentary group also rejects the idea of changing the elections law for returning to local elections for mayors in two rounds.