President Iohannis conducts consultations with political parties. Party leaders vow consensus, still have divergent views

President Klaus Iohannis has started on Monday, at Cotroceni Palace, the consultations with parliamentary parties regarding the stage of election law and regarding the parliamentary procedures for the approval of justice’s notifications. The first meeting was with a delegation led by PSD President, PM Victor Ponta.
At the beginning of the meeting, Victor Ponta noted that change of sides for representatives of parties and parliamentary parties in consultation with the president.
“Now, something must change,” said President Iohannis.
“We agree with all the changes. Any change that makes us forget the old days is welcome,” said the Premier.
The social-democrats’ included Chamber of Deputies Speaker Valeriu Zgonea, PSD executive President Liviu Dragnea, and Gabriela Poda?c?, Andrei Dolineaschi and Ioan Chelaru.
To the consultations there are also present presidential advisers Dan Mihalache, Tatiana Niculescu Bran, Lauren?iu ?tefan, Andrei Muraru, Simina Tanasescu, Mihaela Ciochin?.
According to the Presidential Administration, the consultations aim the election law, including regulations needed to ensure the voting rights for Romanians living abroad, parliamentary procedures for the approval of requests for prosecution, remand, arrest or search of MPs and other topics of public interest.
After the Social-Democrats consultations, PNL, UNPR, PC, UDMR representatives and the group of national minorities held talks with President Iohannis.
Statements after the talks:

Victor Ponta, PSD President:

“We have taken a political decision, it is important to know if we can do this year constitutional revision or whether it is a project that PNL no longer considers valid. From our point of view, it would be a big mistake, because we need constitutional changes.”
“Practically, we should take the next step, i.e. let’s preserve the texts accepted by the Venice Commission and the Constitutional Court and vote them in the two chambers and then by referendum,” Ponta added.
The PSD leader recently announced that the party’s intention to have the referendum on constitutional revision held later this year.

Vasile Blaga, PNL co-President:

“The Senate can approve three laws of this package of electoral laws. The first law is the one of financing parties and campaigns. We’ve seen the re-examination request, we’ve sent our views to the president, we have no comments to these points by the review request and it can reach the Senate as soon as Wednesday, is the final vote anyway.”
“The amendments to the law on local elections we’ll discuss in the plenum.
If it passes in the first variant saying the mayor should be elected in one round, that’s it, we’ll accept. Out of two evils – county council president elected on one tour or elected by county counsellors, we can accept the election by county councillors,” said Vasile Blaga.
According to him, PNL has no comment to the third law that could be approved by the Senate this week, the Political Parties Law.
Regarding law on Diaspora voting, Blaga said that this project could be discussed next week in the Election Code Commission.

Gabriel Oprea, UNPR President:

His party constructively understand its share of responsibility in terms of national consensus, but expects the other political parties to assume this responsibility.
“Consensus always involves cooperation and even sometimes compromises both from the power and from the opposition. There are no winners or repeaters when it comes to consensus for Romania,” said Oprea.

Eugen Nicolicea, UNPR vice-president:

UNPR wants to change the status of deputies and senators in the sense that the incompatible MP should terminate the mandate, without a vote in Parliament.
“We set clear and short deadlines already adopted in the Statute of Deputies and Senators, three days in the committee, five days in plenum. It is not possible to have a shorter interval due to abuse of the rights provided in the decisions of the Constitutional Court. On lifting of immunities, we also proposed, and is already adopted, an amendment of the statute meaning adopting with a smaller majority, the majority of those present, for decisions on waiving the immunity,” said Nicolicea.