The president of the PSD, Marcel Ciolacu, said on Friday that Nicolae Ciucă’s decision not to resign from the leadership of the government “is correct”, in the current context of the education strike. According to the agreement regarding the “government rotation”, Ciucă would then resign from the position of prime minister, and Ciolacu would be appointed the head of the Executive.
“The decision taken by us, the three co-presidents of the coalition, is correct, we undertake it together”, said Ciolacu during a conference held at the government by the three leaders of the governing coalition – Nicolae Ciucă (PNL), Marcel Ciolacu (PSD) and Kelemen Hunor (UDMR).
“Together we will continue, me as the president of the Chamber of Deputies, representing the legislature and you, as the prime minister representing the Executive, to solve this problem as quickly as possible. The number one priority is teachers and the health system. We agreed on a calendar together with the leaders of the education unions, it’s a very short calendar, assumed together,” said Ciolacu.
Prime Minister Nicolaea Ciucă said on Friday that she “should have” submitted her mandate “under conditions in which the situation was maintained at a certain balance”, but that she will not resign because of the strike started in education.
“After the talks in the coalition, we decided to continue the dialogue with the unions in education, to maintain this dialogue to find solutions for their justified problems and to make it based on understanding and reason with them to find solutions, but they cannot be solved by a single decision. We have allocated considerable sums, from 2022 until today an additional 8 billion lei have been allocated to education from the budget (…). At this moment we cannot afford to unbalance the budget through a one-way measure. We will continue to maintain the dialogue with the unions, we have presented them with all the data honestly and realistically. We hope that through dialogue we can reach a solution. We talked until late last night, we met again this morning. I have agreed that until these issues are resolved, I will not submit my mandate to assume the responsibility of the position of prime minister. I hope that in the shortest period of time we can implement the bypass plan at the coalition level”, said Nicolae Ciucă.
Editor: Mihnea Lazar
