Financiarul

‘It was a favourable environment for talks, which I do hope will give birth to that climate of trust between the parties, but also between the parties and myself, regardless of my being in power or in opposition, so that we should successfully do our duty of the Constitution revision and the state modernization,’ Basescu told reporters on Tuesday evening at Cotroceni Palace, after the consultations with the opposition parties’ representatives: the Social Democratic Party (PSD), National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Conservative Party (PC).

The president announced right from the start that he would make a short public statement as he did not have any other additional issues to add to the conclusions he had drawn on Monday when he had discussed with the ruling parties’ representatives – the Democratic Liberal Party (PD-L), the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR), the minorities and the Independents’ Group in the Parliament. He added that he did not want people believe his meeting with opposition parties to have been less important.

„The first and most important thing is that all parties present here today, the opposition parties, agree that the Constitution needs to be revised. There is also the idea that, regardless of the parties’ opinions, the vote of the Romanians at the referendum must be taken into account one way or another. There is a diversity of opinions, but nobody rejects the idea of respecting the Romanians’ will,” Basescu said.

He also said that all opposition parties agreed on the need of state reform and reasserted the idea that he is willing to make an effort of mediating all the parties’ opinions in order to have a suitable form which would match the Constitution’s modernisation objectives. He reminded that the only thing beyond negotiation was the Romanians’ will related to a single-chamber Parliament and a reduction of the MP seats to 300 at the most.

„I, in my capacity as Head of State initiating the referendum, cannot negotiate the Romanians’ will. As regards everything else, I am open to any kind of negotiation and mediation,” pointed out Basescu. He considers the process of the state reform to be compulsory and the economic crisis to be highlighting the huge costs and low efficiency of the Romanian state.

„It is difficult to see how much weight the state expenses have for the state’s own functioning when there is economic growth, while under crisis circumstances, it is obvious for all Romanians that the state should be modernised, simplified and made more resource-efficient,” he added.