European Parliament Committee rejects for the second time Romania’s candidate for commissioner role

Romania’s proposal for the Transport Commissioner role, Rovana Plumb, was rejected on Monday for the second time by the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) in the European Parliament by a large majority, by 13 votes to 7. 

Last week, Romania’s candidate was rejected for the first time in the same committee by a large majority, with 15 votes out of the 23.

As a result of the vote, the JURI committee considers Romania’s candidate Rovana Plumb as “unable to exercise” her functions as transport commissioner in the future European Commission.

Rovana Plumb, elected as a PSD MEP in May, was proposed for a commissioner role by the Romanian government and later nominated by Ursula von der Leyen for the Transport portfolio.

The committee will send a letter to Parliament president David Sassoli to explain their decision and state explicitly that the nominations should not go forward.

Read more about

Raionul de Pește Floreasca relaunches the Chef Table concept

read more

“This time, the new letter will include our demand clearly and precisely,” said Sergey Lagodinsky, a German Green MEP and vice president of the committee, cited by Politico.eu.

“There is a conflict of interest and they are unfit for their future jobs,” he added.

On Thursday, Plumb took part in an “extraordinary hearing” in the Legal Affairs Committee of the European Parliament in order to provide clarifications on her financial interest declaration.

According to Politico.eu, a French MEP in the committee, Marie Toussaint, said that there was “a significant difference” between the financial declaration Plumb had submitted in Romania and the one sent to the EP and that they suspected a possible conflict of interest in her case, as two loans worth almost EUR 1 million were missing from the document sent to the EP.

The Romanian anti-corruption agency (DNA) also tried to investigate Plumb in 2017, in a case where she was accused of involvement in an illegal real estate deal involving the Belina island on the Danube River – but the Romanian Parliament rejected the DNA’s indictment request.

Hungary’s commissioner proposal, László Trócsányi, was also rejected for the second time by the JURI committee due to a conflict of interest.