BUCHAREST (Reuters) – Romania’s outgoing president Klaus Iohannis is expected to designate leftist Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu to form a new government on Monday after three pro-European parties agreed to the details of a parliamentary majority.
The Social Democrat Party (PSD) will hold eight cabinet posts including justice, transport, labour and defence, and most of its current ministers will stay on in their posts.
The centrist Liberal Party (PNL) will have six cabinet jobs, including energy and interior and foreign ministries. The ethnic Hungarian party UDMR will have two posts, including finance.
Together with representatives of local ethnic minorities, the three parties will have a slim majority in the legislative in which three ultranationalist and hard-right parties won over a third of seats in a Dec. 1 parliamentary election.
The new government will need to approve a calendar for a new two-round presidential election. The three parties in the coalition have agreed to back a single presidential candidate in an attempt to prevent a representative from the radical right from winning.
The original three rounds of votes to elect a new president and parliament in the European Union and NATO state which shares the longest land border with Ukraine descended into chaos when a little-known far-right pro-Russian politician won the first presidential round on Nov. 24.
His shocking win prompted Romania’s top court to annul the election on suspicion of Russian meddling and order that it be re-run, likely in the first part of 2025.
Romania’s new cabinet will also have the daunting task of lowering the budget deficit from an expected 8.6% of economic output this year – the EU’s largest – to around 7% in 2025 and ratings agencies and analysts expect tax hikes.
(Reporting by Luiza Ilie; Editing by Michael Perry)
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