Written by Lucienne Attard (The Directorate-General for the Presidency),
Romania will hold the EU Council Presidency from January to July 2019. Its Presidency comes at the end of the European Parliament’s current legislative term, with European elections taking place on 23-26 May 2019. This is the first time that Romania holds the EU Council Presidency since joining the European Union on 1 January 2007.
Romania has a bicameral legislature. The Parliament consists of the Senate (the upper house) having 137 seats and the Chamber of Deputies (the lower house) with 332 seats. The members of both houses are elected by direct, popular vote on the basis of proportional representation to serve four-year terms. The executive branch of the Government is directly or indirectly dependent on the support of the parliament, often expressed through a vote of confidence.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) heads the current governmental alliance with the centre-right Liberal-Democrat Alliance (ALDE). Romania is a semi-presidential republic, with Klaus Iohannis as President in office since November 2014, and the current Prime Minister, Viorica Dancila (PSD), in office since January 2018.
Political priorities of the Romanian Presidency
This note looks at the Romanian Presidency priorities, with those dossiers which figure in the Joint Declaration agreed by the three institutions as priorities up to May 2019 marked with an asterisk (*).
Romania will focus on the over-arching principle of cohesion as a common European value, and as an expression of the unity between EU Member States and regions. To this end, it has announced that its Presidency programme will focus on four main pillars:
- ensuring fair and sustainable development through an increased level of convergence, cohesion, innovation, digitalisation and connectivity;
- maintaining a safe Europe;
- strengthening the EU’s global role; and
- a Europe of shared values.
Read the full briefing here: Priority Dossiers under the Romanian EU Council Presidency.
The Directorate-General for the Presidency (DG Presidency) plays a key role throughout each parliamentary procedure, from its launch until its conclusion through the adoption of an EP resolution or legislative act, in particular in ensuring the smooth running of the plenary sessions. The staff of the DG play a key coordination role across the different services of the Parliament, and support Members in a wide range of activities. The Interinstitutional Relations Unit within DG Presidency, amongst other tasks, prepares a broad range documents concerned with strategic programming, such as on activities of the Commission and the Council.
