Why 2023 is the key year for Ciucă, Ciolacu and Iohannis / The most important political events expected to take place in the new year

The political fate of Marcel Ciolacu and Nicolae Ciucă will be decided in 2023, a year with major political stakes for the PSD and PNL leaders, but also for President Klaus Iohannis. The evolution of the war in Ukraine will also have an impact on domestic politics in Romania. Depending on the intensity of the war, the planned rotation of the priminister in May, for reasons of political stability, may or may not take place. Romania plays a key role in the region. In any case, the formation of a Ciolacu – Ciucă political tandem is already taking shape. Both are aware that they cannot survive politically without each other after the rotation, should it take place. But what are the main political events of the new year, why the 2024 elections will practically be decided now and what will influence them?

War in Ukraine. Both the PSD and the PNL are considering keeping Nicolae Ciucă at the head of the government if the war in Ukraine escalates or if it leads to the dramatic situation of a direct NATO-Russia confrontation. In this scenario, there will be no time for prolonged political crises and negotiations on the formation of a new government. It is then hard to believe that the strategic partners will be pleased at the prospect of political instability in a country considered one of the most important allies in the region.

Cynically, in this scenario, life for the two leaders is simplified, not complicated. If Ciucă remains prime minister beyond May, no one will question his position as PNL president, the real springboard to the presidential elections. For Ciolacu it will also be a relief. The party is pushing him to take over as head of government in five months’ time, but the PSD leader knows that once he’s in the Victoria Palace his chances of running for president in 2024 will dramatically diminish. If he doesn’t run for the highest office in the land, Ciolacu’s days at the head of the PSD are numbered. The party that has devoured many of its leaders will mercilessly throw another overboard. Sorin Grindeanu, Mihai Tudose, Gabriela Firea, and younger leaders with big ambitions are warming up on the sidelines.

In short, keeping Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă in office beyond May is the easiest solution for the coalition leaders. Ciolacu could escape the wrath of the party and pressure from the party bosses by pointing the finger at Putin and his war in Ukraine: We can’t throw the country into crisis, we need stability. And if things get worse in Kosovo, where tensions on the Serbian border are escalating, then everyone will breathe a sigh of relief. Nothing will change at the top. The coalition will carry on as is.

Ciolacu premier. If the government rotation does take place in May and Marcel Ciolacu takes over as Prime Minister, under pressure from the party and the political bosses desperate for access to resources, things will get complicated for the two leaders. Nicolae Ciucă has failed to establish himself as the de facto leader of the PNL, so he risks being quickly replaced once he leaves Victoria Palace. His political future depends further on Marcel Ciolacu.

Because he needs Ciucă for his long-term plans, the PSD leader could make his assumption of the prime ministership conditional on Nicolae Ciucă’s appointment as head of the Liberals, arguing that he has proved a fair political partner. If they don’t want to keep him, the Liberals could be threatened with Ciolacu’s resignation from the government and early elections.

But it won’t be that simple. Come ‘rotation time’ the Liberals will want to wrest the piggy bank Transport Ministry from the social democrats as compensation for losing the premiership. Sorin Grindeanu and the PSD-ists will hold on with their teeth to this ministry’s money and public contracts. They will probably be willing to give up justice to the Liberals and even cede the finances to them, just to keep transport. In short, it’s hard to believe the rotation will happen smoothly. It won’t be a simple rotation of premiers, but a blood feud over the lucrative ministries.

If Ciolacu becomes PM in May, he will most likely start losing points in the polls due to erosion. In the PSD, which is already falling in the polls, more and more challengers will emerge. Once he becomes prime minister, Ciolacu’s path will only go downhill. It will only be a matter of time before he is replaced as party leader. To save his position as party leader, he would have to secure his premiership after next year’s elections.

That’s why he might promise Nicolae Ciucă that he will help him become Romania’s president in 2024, provided he keeps him as head of government after the elections. It would be a poisoned gift, but it wouldn’t be out of the question that these talks have already taken place.

In any case, the Ciolacu – Ciucă tandem is expected to strengthen in 2023, not weaken, since both leaders understand that their political survival depends on each other. At least for this year.

The Ciucă – Ciolacu tandem. The problem is that the good understanding between the two leaders and any long-term plans made together do not have the support of the PSD and PNL. They are rather personal agreements, private solutions of survival. Part of the PNL, for example, does not believe in the eventual candidacy of Nicolae Ciucă for the presidency, even if the prime minister enjoys massive support in Washington. Some see Cluj mayor Emil Boc as a more suitable solution. It is unclear whether the good political collaboration between Ciucă and Ciolacu and their plans for a brotherly power-sharing enjoys the endorsement of President Klaus Iohannis and the system in general. More likely not.

UDMR. Will the Hungarians be kept in power at the governmental rotation if it happens in May? Most likely not, because of the UDMR – FIDESZ relationship. PNL and PSD will not risk going into the elections arm-in-arm with a political organization that has become an annex of Viktor Orban in Romania. If it is kept in government, however, it will be left with a maximum of one ministry, according to internal assessments.

Appointing new chief prosecutors. The justice ministry has already started the selection process. At the end of February, the beginning of March, the mandates of the chief prosecutors of the General Prosecutor’s Office, DNA and DIICOT expire. We’ve already explained why the new appointments are vital, but the stakes are much higher than they first appear.

At the last meeting at the end of the year, the government also approved the draft Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code, which are due to go to Parliament. The justice ministry proposes in the draft amendment to the Criminal Procedure Code that intelligence recordings can be used as evidence in criminal proceedings, including for corruption offenses.

It is a key change that could bring the secret services back into full force in criminal investigations targeting high-ranking politicians, mayors or local barons. If these proposals pass Parliament, the power of the new chief prosecutors will increase significantly, as will the power of the SRI in relation to those who wield power. A fierce debate is expected in parliament on the issue: how much extra power will the intelligence services get? Will the PNL, UDMR and especially the PSD accept to make the secret services power brokers again, one year before the 2024 elections?

Schengen. Even if accession to the free movement area has remained a political objective, it is hard to believe that Sweden, which holds the presidency of the European Union since 1 January, will put the issue of Schengen enlargement on the agenda and support it as strongly as the Czechs did. Sweden itself has a problem with immigrants. There is a better chance that Schengen will be back on the agenda in the second half of the year when Spain takes over the EU presidency. But skeptics say even then it won’t be easy, as we will already be very close to the European Parliament elections, and the issue is not exactly popular, especially in the Nordic countries. Who wants to talk about opening borders in the middle of a campaign?

If Romania also misses out in 2023, it will most likely not be possible for Romania to join Schengen until 2025, after the EU-wide parliamentary elections have calmed down. But President Klaus Iohannis’s goal, after last year’s miss, is for Romania to join Schengen during his term of office. It would be one of the few achievements after almost a decade in the presidency.

The battle with prices. Not only the dynamics of the war, but also the evolution of the economy will be decisive for the fate of the government and the coalition. Prime Minister Nicolae Ciucă is lucky so far with a mild winter and social peace. Nothing guarantees that things will stay the same. Inflation, and energy prices, will continue to erode purchasing power and lower living standards. Still, there are two months of winter left, the cheerful atmosphere of the holidays has dissipated, and from now on social depression will set in. Prospects for economic growth in 2023 are modest.

A possible major political crisis would upset all political calculations and sweep away the current leaders in power in Romania. The state of the economy will most likely also dictate the behavior of the PSD, a populist party ready at any time to get out of government and go into opposition when it senses that social discontent is reaching the boiling point.

The rise of extremism. One of the biggest dangers in 2023 is the rise in the polls of the far-right party AUR. In the last opinion poll published at the end of December by INSCOP, AUR was the only party to show a slight increase over the previous month, while all other parties saw a decline. With his nationalist-aggressive discourse, discreetly helped by the PSD, George Simion managed to gain while all the others lost ground.

If Marcel Ciolacu will still run for president in 2024, then he will have every interest to increase the AUR so much that he will enter the second round with him, following the Vadim Tudor – Ion Iliescu model of 23 years ago. This is the only way Marcel Ciolacu would have a chance to be elected to the presidency of Romania, if the alternative was a political scarecrow. This could be Ciolacu’s big game: Ciucă, a weak and maneuverable candidate, kept at all costs at the PNL, while in parallel inflating the AUR candidate to the maximum in order to enter the second round and repeating the scenario of 2000 when the „lesser evil” was elected.

If president seems too big a hat for him, the PSD leader would have another chance to legitimize himself politically if he were to run for mayor of the capital, where the PSD’s chances are quite high in a one-round election system with a deeply divided right.

Except that here he has already rushed to announce Gabriela Firea as his candidate, and it’s still unclear whether he did so under pressure from her or to block her path to the presidency.

USR. There is not much to say here. Cătălin Drulă’s party is hovering around 10% in the opposition. It remains to be seen if they will manage to find a way to break the media barrage and make the opposition work. Otherwise, USR risks losing not only voters but also mayors, essential to the political battles. The political plans of Dacian Ciolos and his party, Reper, which is split from USR, are totally unclear.

Conclusion. The political year 2023 is therefore decisive for the political fate of Marcel Ciolacu, Nicolae Ciucă and even for how President Klaus Iohannis will go down in history. Towards the end of the year we will most likely also find out the names of the future candidates for the Romanian presidency and who will be left standing before the big battle in 2024, with four rounds of elections: the European Parliament, local, parliamentary and presidential elections. But the results of the first round will be really decisive: the May-June European Parliament elections, scheduled for next year. Only then will each party know exactly where it stands and whom it is going forward with.

Traducere (Ovidiu Harfas)