Confirmed by Juncker: MEP Corina Cretu to have the Regional Policy portfolio

Newsroom 09/09/2014 | 08:40

The rumors that PM Victor Ponta didn’t want to confirm last week are today facts: MEP Corina Cretu was nominated by the president of EC Jean Claude Juncker as in charge of the Regional Policy portfolio, with a budget of EUR 351 bln. She will replace Austrian Johannes Hahn, who now holds the Regional Policy portfolio.

EU Observer publication wrote that “Cretu, 47, is a former presidential spokeswoman who made headlines last year when the email account of former US foreign secretary Colin Powell was hacked and a series of intimate emails between him and Cretu were published, prompting the US politician to deny he ever had an affair with her. Cretu trumped Romania’s outgoing commissioner for agriculture, Dacian Ciolos, who was Romania’s initial nomination, because of the EP’s condition for at least nine women to be part of the commission. The centre-right opposition in Bucharest meanwhile has written a letter to Juncker accusing the Socialist government of having “illegally” appointed her, without the approval of the Romanian Parliament.”

Romanian Gandul online newspaper notes that in Brussels there are worries about Corina Cretu’s competence for this position, while the only economic experience she has had was her activity at the Factory for Machines and Tools in Blaj between 1989 and 1992, after graduating from The School for Economics. Since then, Cretu has had a communication career, being a journalist, working with publications close to PSD, then spokesperson for Ion Iliescu, senator and MEP.