The first vice-president of the PNL, Rareş Bogdan, announced that next week the coalition will determine how this year's elections will be organized, the budget for all elections being 800 million euros, which could be reduced to 500 million euros, in function of mergers.
Rareș Bogdan, first vice-president of PNL PHOTO Mediafax
“There will be more rounds of discussions on Monday and Tuesday. The electoral legislative calendar tells us that next week we have to decide what we will do”, stated Rareș Bogdan, pointing out that if all the elections were organized on time, the costs would be around 800 million euros, while through some mergers they would be reduced to 500 million, in the version with the greatest savings. In the case of a single merger, of the MEPs with the local ones, the budget for the elections would be somewhere around 650 million lei.
“We will talk, we will see what is best for the Romanian citizen, what is best for Romania and after that we will decide. We are listening (…) to the voice of the media and the voice of analysts and the voice of civil society and the voice of the citizens, we will not make any decision in any way to go against the wishes of the Romanian citizens and I assure you that in a few days there will be a decision and the election calendar will be known“, said Rareş Bogdan, on Saturday, in Pitesti.
According to the MEP, “merging would lead to a turnout of over 50% of voters, otherwise we will have 33-34%“.
How to respond to criticism of the merger
“Of course there were questions related to why this happened and that it did not happen in other countries and that it would not be democratic or would be a violation of democracy. Not. In Germany, local and regional elections are held at the same time as European parliaments in nine out of 16 states. In Italy, out of 20 regions, local and regional elections are held at the same time as European parliaments in 12 regions. In Belgium, in Flanders, including parliamentary elections, not only local and regional ones, are organized. In Luxembourg it is the same. Hungary has local and regional elections, along with European Parliament elections. Ireland, too. And the examples can go on. Only less than nine European states out of 27 organize, alongside the European parliamentary elections, one or two internal, local or regional elections, or local, regional or, in the case of Belgium, including parliamentary elections. So the European examples are as eloquent as possible“, said Rareş Bogdan.
