Agriculture minister resigns

Adrian Oros announced on Tuesday morning that he will resign from the position of Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development (MADR), arguing that “for Prime Minister Florin Cîţu, agriculture and the food industry have never been priorities”.

Adrian Oros was part of Ludovic Orban’s team and was on the list of ministers to be reshuffled. Florin Cîțu is expected today to decide in the PNL leadership’s meeting who will leave the Government.

“Today I will resign as Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development. For Prime Minister Florin Cîţu, agriculture and the food industry have never been priorities, as such: 1. The Agriculture Ministry’s budget for 2021 represents 60% of the 2020 budget execution, with impacts on ongoing programs. At the budget rectification, MADR received a tiny amount, absolutely insufficient. 2. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan did not include any major projects for agriculture. Although in the first draft sent to the Commission in November 2020, the PNRR contained a complex project for water management in agriculture (irrigation, drainage / drainage and anti-hail system), worth 6.5 billion euros, a project undertaken in the Government Program, together with the Network for storage, processing and distribution of Romanian products, another project that has not taken place in PNRR “, Adrian Oros posted on Facebook on Tuesday.

At the same time, the resigning Agriculture minister complained that there is not enough determination to “eradicate the activity of the middlemen, of those who are hunting subsidies and of the black market” which affects the honest farmers. “This way, any type of subsidy, any form of support becomes inefficient”, Oros said.

Oros has yet denied that his resignation has something to do with the PNL Congress and with him being in “Orban’s team” (editor note: Ludovic Orban, the former Liberal chair who lost his seat to PM Citu). The resigning minister explained that he had resigned as he had not got enough support from PM Citu for the agriculture programmes. “I only talked to the PM twice in nine months since we have been in power”, he argued.

Oros also complained that the ministry had received a lower budget than last year.