After 14 hours of plenary session on Monday, the new MPs in the 2020-2024 legislature were officially validated late at night.
PSD, PNL, USR, UDMR and AUR have agreed to take the leadership of the committees and also decided the leaders of the two chambers, with the centre right-wing coalition officially taking power in Parliament.
Liberal chairman Ludovic Orban, the former PM in the past one year was elected the speaker of the Chamber of Deputies after a marathon session that lasted until after midnight. Orban won by 179 votes from PNL, USR and UDMR, 110 against (PSD). Those 110 votes went to the SocDem candidate, Alfred Simonis. AUR lawmakers did not vote.
At some point, close to midnight, after announcing the validation of 329 mandates of deputies and 322 of them swore in, the deputy who chaired the session as alderman, Lucian Feodorov (AUR) said he is tired and left the session, along with all AUR deputies, before the election of the speaker.
In the Senate all went well and, for the first time in Romania’s history, the upper chamber of Parliament is led by a woman – Anca Dragu from USR-PLUS. Anca Dragu, endorsed by PNL, USR-PLUS and UDMR was elected by 75 votes, defeating SocDem Lucian Romascanu who obtained 51 votes.
133 senators attended the plenary session on Monday and voted, with 7 votes being declared null.
Anca Dragu, a financier by profession, was Finance minister in the technocrat Dacian Ciolos Cabinet in 2016.