Marcel Ciolacu (56 years old) has not officially announced his presidential candidacy and is circulating all kinds of alternatives, such as supporting an independent, although the party insists that in the race for Cotroceni, the PSD must send its leader.
Marcel Ciolacu, in the books for the supreme position in the state. PHOTO: PSD
Marcel Ciolacu (56 years old), the current prime minister of Romania, is being circulated by some of the PSD leaders as a candidate for the presidency of Romania. But a failure in the elections would be equivalent to his passing into the background at the party level, which is why Ciolacu is postponing the moment of the announcement.
Until then, however, Ciolacu will run, at the end of August, for a new mandate as PSD president. He puts on the table of social democratic voters a period of 4 years of stability after the troubled period of Liviu Dragnea’s dominance.
Under Ciolacu’s leadership, PSD returned to government in alliance with PNL, after a short break from the fall of 2019 until December 2021.
After Liviu Dragnea and Viorica Dăncilă, despite the fact that he was not among the powerful leaders of the party nor was he a far-reaching politician, Ciolacu managed to maintain stability in the party and keep his power for 4 years having the biggest chances of being re-elected president of the PSD. Even as Prime Minister of Romania, his mandate was not affected by scandals and blunders, if we compare it with those of his predecessors.
Ciolacu is a politician with no pedigree: a small businessman from Buzău, being at one point even the co-owner of a pretzel shop, he started his political career at the PSD Buzău youth organization and graduated from a private university at the age of 37 not at all prestigious – the Ecological University.
Considering this situation, the fact that he is in the cards for the position of president of Romania and even has a chance to win – if he goes to the second round with George Simion – according to most polls, is a performance.
His career in big politics may end, however, as suddenly as it began, if he loses the presidential elections – at least this is what the history of the PSD shows us, which usually devoured its candidates who did not win the elections for the position supreme in the state.
Bachelor’s degree at 37 years old
Marcel Ciolacu was born on November 28, 1967, in Buzau. He got his baccalaureate in 1986, at the “Mihai Eminescu” Philology-History High School in his hometown.
The next step in the education of the social democrat is controversial. Basically, he started college at 24. In 1989, he failed the exam at the Faculty of Law and had to join the army.
After leaving the hearth, according to the official CV, he worked as a worker at the Electronic Industrial Enterprise in Bucharest, and after the Revolution he finally became a law student (in 1991). In parallel, he launched into business.
He explained, in 2023, when he was appointed as Prime Minister:
“In my time, I went to the army, where I first did agricultural work for about two or three months. The Revolution came, other priorities came, I got married“.
Ciolacu claimed that he preferred to do business and only after that he returned to school:
“After we bought all the competition, after 7 years, the baby appeared and we got a two-room apartment on Viitorului street and closed our balcony, I decided that I was bored of doing business. I finished my studies, entered the local administration, became interim prefect, lost the elections, became deputy mayor, managed the largest municipal company. This is the great secret, the great hidden things. I take the decisions. I got a grade 9 in my bachelor’s degree”.
Between 1991 and 1995, he studied at the Faculty of Law of the Ecological University of Bucharest, an institution that obtained its operating authorization in 1995.
He only got his license in 2004, at 37 years old. It was the first years in which the Ecological University organized undergraduate sessions after, a year before, it had been accredited by the Ministry of Education and received this right.
He escaped the verification of his doctorate because he was expelled.
In his CV it appears that in 2004 he completed postgraduate courses at the Ecological University, and between 2008 and 2009, he took postgraduate courses at the Bucharest National Defense College. Between 2010 and 2012, he did a master’s degree at SNSPA Bucharest.
“Ciolacu’s entire CV is extremely murky, with bizarre diplomas, post-graduate studies done before he got his degree at an unaccredited college and other such oddities. Above all, the past of the new prime minister is one kept secret, Ciolacu hiding numerous information from his career up to 37 years old”claimed Valeriu Nicolae, producer of shows dedicated to politicians’ CVs.
Pretzel owner
Marcel Ciolacu is married and has a son. He has remained tight-lipped about his family information.
Before getting actively involved in politics, Marcel Ciolacu worked in the private sector and was involved in business.
He was associated with a security and protection firm, where he owned part of the shares, he had stakes in several companies, including in areas such as trade and real estate. There is information that Marcel Ciolacu was co-owner of a pretzel shop in Buzău.
He obtained the first commercial space from the City Hall, having a certificate of fighter for the victory of the Revolution of December 1989, signed by the president Ion Iliescu.
“Se vaguely describes himself as an “entrepreneur, administrator and associate” at several private companies. In reality, he was a businessman and a minor local politician. However, a skilled juggler who, behind the screen of some boutiques in the market, used his public positions to make private money. Two episodes are still relevant today: the partnership with OMV from the 2000s and the business of a deforested forest, taken from the state, on the land of which the Dedeman store in Buzău was built in the meantime” – according to an investigation by the Recorder.
The investigation cited art that Marcel Ciolacu’s company is buying, on behalf of the LUCIA COM ’94 patisserie, a 9,359 square meter pasture in the Buzoian commune of Merei. Pay the equivalent of 260 euros. In 2003, they exchanged the 9,359 m2 rural pasture with a 9,358 m2 forest located in the suburbs of the city of Buzău, on today’s Nordului Road, near Vămă. The land was partially leased to a mobile gas station, and in December 2015 it was sold to a building materials retailer – Dedeman. LUCIA COM ’94 then collected 438,476 euros (including VAT). 1,700 times more than he had originally paid for the pasture given in exchange.
Political career
Since 1992, he has been a member of the Social Democratic Party. He started from the bottom, as vice president of the Youth Organization PSD Buzău (1996–2000), vice president of the Municipal Organization PSD Buzău (2000–2010), vice president of the County Organization PSD Buzău (2000–2010) and president of the Municipal Organization PSD Buzău ( 2010–2015).
He was interim prefect between November 2005 and December 2006, and then, as a local councillor, he was elected deputy mayor for the term 2008–2012.
He became a deputy after the parliamentary elections of December 9, 2012. He worked in Prime Minister Ponta’s team, who in March 2013 appointed him honorary adviser on regionalization and public administration issues. A year later he became secretary of the Chamber of Deputies.
After the dismissal of Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu, Marcel Ciolacu became deputy prime minister without portfolio in the cabinet led by Mihai Tudose. Then he climbed another step in the administration: in September 2017, he secured the interim position at the Ministry of Defense. A year later, he was among the dissidents who demanded the resignation of Liviu Dragnea. After the conviction of the latter, Ciolacu was elected president of the Chamber of Deputies.
In August 2020, Marcel Ciolacu was elected president of the Social Democratic Party. Under his leadership, PSD continued to be one of the most influential political parties in Romania, ensuring a period of stability, without major scandals.
In 2023, Marcel Ciolacu became the Prime Minister of Romania. He had a mandate in which he benefited from broad support in Parliament and led the executive without major scandals and blunders.
The revolutionary Marcel Ciolacu
Two important scandals are related to Ciolacu’s CV. One of these concerns his quality as a revolutionary. He also received a revolutionary certificate, attesting to his participation in the events that led to the fall of the communist regime in Romania, but his actual participation is a controversial issue.
“A posture (that of revolutionary-no) from which he claimed that he never asked for benefits. And yet, the certificate of revolutionary brought him, in turn, an agricultural land, a commercial space in the Central Square of Buzău on which he then built his businesses, and not one, but two eternal places in the “Heroes” Cemetery. At least in the scripts of the Buzoian City Hall, Marcel Ciolacu is a hero. Title also obtained through a beautification of reality”, it is stated in the cited Recorder’s investigation.
A second controversy that has Marcel Ciolacu in the center refers to his connection with Omar Hayssam, a Syrian businessman established in Romania, who became known following his involvement in the kidnapping of Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005, for which he was later convicted. It was speculated that the PSD leader would have had business connections with people from the Syrian’s entourage, but the direct and concrete connections between the two have not been clearly proven publicly. The only certainty is the participation, alongside Hayssam, in a hunting game, but there is no evidence that the two collaborated in business.
