Brussels, 17/12/2012 (Agence Europe) - On Monday 17 December, the Romanian centre-right President, Traian Basescu, appointed Victor Ponta prime minister, following the elections of 9 December which saw an overwhelming victory for Ponta's coalition. This centre-left coalition, the Social-Liberal Union (USL), won nearly 60% of the votes. This appointment rules out the risk of a further political crisis in Romania and of any new crisis with the European Commission.
On Friday, Commission President José Manuel Barroso congratulated Ponta following the publication of the official results and stressed the Romanians' “clear choice”, made “democratically”. Barroso also paid tribute to the commitment of all Romanian political players to ensure respect for the rule of law and to consolidate all counter-powers.
The Commission is to publish a new report on the country and its efforts in the field of corruption and legal reform under the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM) as it undertook to do in July at the height of the institutional battle between Basescu and Ponta. In this summer report, the Commission called on the Romanian authorities, amongst other things, to guarantee the independence of the legal system and to ensure full transparency for certain appointments, for example those to the Constitutional Court or to posts of public prosecutors tasked with fighting corruption. It is the implementation of these recommendations and the state of play of the most recent legislative recommendations that the new report will assess. (SP/transl.fl)