Interim President Ilie Bolojan will convene a CSAT meeting

Interim President Ilie Bolojan is to convene a Supreme National Defense Council (CSAT) meeting next week, following international developments, the Presidential Administration announced.

“Consultations are currently underway to establish the CSAT agenda. A specific date will be set later,” the Presidential Administration told Digi24.

The CSAT meeting’s agenda could include the cancellation of last year’s presidential elections, a subject on which Romania has received criticism, including from the United States, as well as Russia’s demands that NATO return to its sphere of influence from 1997, before our country joined the alliance.

Prime Minister Ciolacu said that a CSAT meeting should be convened, with the agreement of the interim president, on the topic of evidence regarding the cancellation of the presidential elections, following the speech of US Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference. “I have no powers in this regard. It is best to hold a CSAT. It is institutionally correct for the president to initiate it,” Ciolacu told journalists.

Moreover, PM Ciolacu said Thursday evening that President Klaus Iohannis should not have resigned, as the international context required the presence of an elected president at Cotroceni. “It is difficult to have a dialogue partner now, when you have an interim president in Romania,” Ciolacu said, adding that the peace negotiations in Ukraine and the Russian-American talks caught us “as if between the rails.”

Crin Antonescu, the ruling coalition’s candidate in the presidential elections, also said that the CSAT meeting should be convened.

“A country does not defend itself with its hands folded. The discussion about returning strategic partnerships to 1997 is a serious one and we cannot remain silent or wait for a sign. We must break free from the deadlock and take two simple steps: ⁠to urgently convene the Supreme Council for the Defense of the Country and, subsequently, to communicate clearly and punctually what was discussed;⁠ ⁠to organize a meeting of all pro-European political leaders in Romania. I say all, because the fate of the country concerns us all. Regardless of ideological positioning,” Crin Antonescu wrote in a message on Facebook.

Crin Antonescu declared on Tuesday in Timişoara that the first thing he would do as elected president of Romania would be to call Elon Musk and tell him that Romania is already a sovereign and independent state.

“I saw a post by Mr. Elon Musk about Romania, in which he says that it deserves to be sovereign. If I were president, the first thing I would do would be to call him and tell him that yes, Romania deserves to be sovereign, that it has been sovereign since 1877, if he doesn’t know, that it has been a unitary state since 1918, if he doesn’t know, and that therefore, in this respect, thank you, we don’t need anything. I mean, we have been a sovereign state for a long time, sovereignty is enshrined in the Romanian Constitution in force and in international treaties, and of course this is a result of the merits that this nation has had, of the sacrifices that this nation has made to acquire this sovereignty. There is no need for someone to give it to us via Twitter,” Crin Antonescu answered a question from the press, about which would be the first thing he would do as president of Romania.

Two days ago, Elon Musk posted on X: “Romania deserves its own sovereignty!.”