“It will be an apartment in a protocol villa in Bucharest. SPP has already submitted the application, and the Government will approve a decision in this regard next week,” Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said on Thursday, ahead of the government meeting.
According to the procedure, SPP submits an application to the RA-APPS, which identifies the housing space and initiates a government decision.
The law stipulates that the protocol residence for the former head of state cannot be the residence he had as president in office.
The law in force (Law 406/2001) provides that former presidents of Romania benefit from the following rights during their lifetime: “Free use of a protocol residence and a space for the office, with a counselor and a secretary position, both assigned for the purpose of residence”.
In February 2024, journalists from Recorder wrote that a protocol villa was being prepared for Klaus Iohannis on Aviatorilor Boulevard, with works estimated by journalists at seven million euros.
Recorder wrote at the time that it was a 475 square meter villa, with a plot of 1,110 square meters, a 1,265 square meter office building, a 43 square meter garage and a 23 square meter doorman’s cabin. Following the press investigation, in November 2024 the Ciolacu Government declassified the expenses for the “Emperor’s Palace”, claiming that they amounted to approximately 3 million euros. However, the Government did not communicate the name of the future tenant.
At the end of January this year, government sources told G4Media that Iohannis would no longer receive the villa in Aviatorilor, and would be assigned another protocol residence from the Autonomous Administration of the “Administration of State Protocol Heritage” (RA-APPS), possibly Vila Lac 2. G4Media wrote that the villa is located in the Primăverii neighborhood, also an exclusive area of the capital, and the property is even larger than the one in Aviatorilor, with a 2,000 square meter building and a 37,230 square meter plot of land.
I do not know of any other normal Democracy that this happens as well.