Romanian politician
Dacian Julien Cioloș (Romanian pronunciation:[datʃiˈanˈtʃoloʃ]; born 27 July ) is a Romanian agronomist who served as Prime Minister of Romania from November to January He previously served as Agriculture Minister under Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu between October and December In November , European CommissionPresidentJosé Manuel Barroso nominated him to be the next Agriculture Commissioner, a position he assumed in February and held until his term expired in November In November , PresidentKlaus Iohannis named him prime minister; Cioloș assumed office after receiving approval from Parliament.
He remained until after the parliamentary election, which was lost by the parties that called for Cioloș to continue his term. Cioloș is the founder of the Freedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (PLUS) within the larger former political construction USR PLUS (–). Between October and February , he led the Save Romania Union (USR), into which the party he founded was merged. In May , he was elected a Member of the European Parliament (MEP), subsequently becoming leader of the new Renew Europepolitical group. He relinquished the leadership upon becoming USR president.
In October , following the ousting of Prime Minister Florin Cîțu through a motion of no-confidence, President Iohannis nominated Cioloș as Prime Minister-designate but the Parliament rejected the proposal. The following May, he quit USR and launched a new party, REPER.
He was born in Zalău, but spent much of his childhood with his grandparents in nearby Pericei village, where he developed an interest in farming. After graduating from the agricultural high school in Șimleu Silvaniei in , he attended the Faculty of Horticulture at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, earning a horticultural engineer's degree in [1] While a student, Cioloș belonged to the Romanian Hearth Union’s youth wing; he states that his activities there were of a cultural nature, and had nothing to do with the party's extreme nationalist stance.[2] He also holds degrees in the economy of agricultural development from the École nationale supérieure agronomique de Rennes and from the University of Montpellier 1, where he respectively earned a master's in and a doctorate in He has belonged to the agricultural think tankGroupe de Bruges since [3] Although in Romania Cioloș was a political independent,[4][5] he was affiliated with the European People's Party (EPP) at the European level.[6][7]
From to , Cioloș completed thirteen months' worth of internships on organic farms in the French region of Brittany. In the summer of , he prepared a rural development project between Savoie and Argeș County, while working at the Aveyron agricultural chamber of commerce in Rodez during , studying agricultural and rural development in the northern part of that department. In and , he interned as an agro-economist at the European Commission's Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development in Brussels, helping prepare the Special Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD). In –, he directed a local rural development programme in Argeș County, again cooperating with Savoie. From to , he worked at two agricultural development agencies in France, coordinating joint programmes with Romania in that field. From to , as part of the European Commission's delegation to Romania, he helped manage SAPARD's implementation in his native country. From January to May , he was an adviser to Romania's Agriculture Minister, and a representative in the Council of the European Union's Special Committee on Agriculture. From May to October , he was undersecretary of state for European affairs at the ministry.[3] Following the resignation of Decebal Traian Remeș due to a corruption scandal,[8] he was appointed Agriculture Minister in October , serving until the following December, when Tăriceanu's National Liberal Party-led government left office after a parliamentary election.[9] Early in , he returned to work at the Agriculture and Rural Development DG,[10] and that July, PresidentTraian Băsescu named him to head a one-year commission looking at public agricultural development policies.[11]
In October , the Emil Boc government, hoping to secure the Agriculture portfolio in the second Barroso Commission, nominated Cioloș as Romania's EU Commissioner.[12] The proposal was criticised by the opposition National Liberals (PNL) and Social Democrats (PSD), who saw it as a last-ditch maneuver by a government on the brink of collapse, as well as by the Party of European Socialists, who believed that the position ought to have gone to a Social Democrat.[5] Boc's cabinet did indeed collapse the day after nominating Cioloș, when it lost a motion of no confidence.[13]
At the end of November, Barroso nominated Cioloș to the Agriculture position, observing that he was the "most competent" of those submitted for consideration, and lauding his "modern vision" of agriculture and rural development.[14][15] The British magazine Farmers Weekly considered the nomination "a controversial choice", citing recent mismanagement by Romania of EU funds, but also acknowledged his "broad agricultural experience".[16]England and Wales' National Farmers Union as well as Scotland's NFU welcomed the appointment.[17]ItalianMinister of AgricultureLuca Zaia[18] and FrenchPresidentNicolas Sarkozy likewise congratulated Cioloș.[19]German news agency Deutsche Presse-Agentur and British newspaper The Independent both criticised the nomination due to the funds mismanagement issue, with French daily Ouest-France alleging that the cause of British indignation was the perception that Cioloș would be akin to a second French EU Commissioner, given his close ties to that country.[20]
After winning approval from the European Parliament in February ,[21] Cioloș set forth his priority: maintaining a "thriving agricultural sector" in order to ensure food security, environmental preservation and protection of the countryside, help combat global warming and maintain a "fair standard of living" for farmers. As part of this objective, he promised to continue adapting and restructuring the Common Agricultural Policy.[22]
In July , Barroso's successor Jean-Claude Juncker named Cioloș as his special adviser on international food security.[23]
In November , Prime MinisterVictor Ponta resigned following protests sparked by a deadly nightclub fire, and PresidentKlaus Iohannis appointed Cioloș as his successor.[24] The latter proposed a technocratic cabinet composed of twenty-one members, a third of them women.[25] The cabinet won approval from Parliament on a – vote: the main Social Democrats (PSD) and National Liberals (PNL) were both in favour, although a number of legislators from the former party defied the leadership to vote against the cabinet. Additionally, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) was opposed.[26][27] He considers his two main achievements while in office to have been an increase in transparency, including the online release of salaries and expenditures for public institutions and financing contracts; and a reduction in bureaucracy that involved the elimination of numerous formalities.[28] Ahead of the parliamentary election, Cioloș received the endorsement on behalf of the National Liberals (PNL) and of the Save Romania Union (USR), in turn urging voters to back either party.[29] When these parties lost the election, the prime minister expressed his regret;[30] the following month, he was succeeded by Sorin Grindeanu.[31]
In March , Cioloș announced the creation of a new political party, the Romania Together Movement.[32]
Because the legal registration of the new political party took too long, Cioloș announced on 15 December the existence of a new party, already registered by some anonymous collaborators, called the Freedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (Romanian: Partidul Libertății, Unității și Solidarității, PLUS), thus dropping the former political project.[33]
In January , at the first national convention of PLUS, Cioloș was elected president of the newly emerged political party with % of the votes.[34] The following month, Cioloș announced the establishment of the USR-PLUS Alliance between PLUS and the Dan Barna-led Save Romania Union (USR).[35] That May, he was elected a Member of the European Parliament.[36] He subsequently became leader of the new Renew Europepolitical group, having secured support from En Marche, Ciudadanos and parties from Germany and the Netherlands.[37] He left that post in autumn in order to focus on domestic politics.[38]
In October , following the merger of USR with PLUS, Cioloș was elected the first president of the unified party, defeating Barna on a to margin.[39] Later that month, following the collapse of the Florin Cîțu government, Iohannis once again named Cioloș as prime minister.[40] Cioloș and his proposed cabinet were voted down in Parliament, on a vote of 88–[41] In February , after his program was rejected by subordinates in the USR leadership, Cioloș resigned as party president.[42] That May, he quit USR altogether, citing dissatisfaction with the new leadership, and launched a new party, Renewing Romania's European Project (REPER).[43]
At the European Parliament election, REPER failed to secure the threshold, and Cioloș lost his seat.[44] He subsequently announced his withdrawal from electoral politics.[45]
In , Cioloș married Valérie Villemin, a French agriculture expert he met while studying in France. The ceremony took place in his grandparents' village of Pericei. The couple have no children.[46][47][48] He has a younger brother, Sorin.[49] His father insisted on Dacian as a first name, while his French middle name comes from Julien Sorel, protagonist of The Red and the Black, a book that Cioloș's mother read while pregnant with him.[50] Cioloș is a member of the Romanian Orthodox Church.[48]