Dacian Cioloș

Dacian Cioloș (2019)

Dacian Cioloș (pronunciation: [dat͡ʃiˈan ˈt͡ʃʲoloʃ] ; born July 27, 1969 in Zalău , Sălaj County , Transylvania ) is a Romanian agricultural engineer and politician. He was from 2010 to 2014 in the European Commission for the departmental Agriculture and Rural Development responsible. From November 2015 to January 2017, Cioloș was Prime Minister of Romania . Cioloș was independent until 2018, since then he has headed the PLUS party that he founded . Since June 2019 he has been Chairman of the Group Renew Europe in the European Parliament .

Life

After graduating from high school, Cioloș studied at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Cluj-Napoca (Klausenburg) and graduated in 1994 with a degree in horticultural engineering. After various internships and postgraduate studies in France, he received his doctorate in economics from the École nationale supérieure agronomique in Montpellier (France). From 2002 to 2003 he worked for the EU delegation in Romania as a task manager for agriculture and rural development.

From January 2005 he worked in the Romanian Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Rural Development, and from October 2007 to December 2008 he was a non-party minister of agriculture in the liberally dominated Tăriceanu II cabinet .

Political offices

EU Agriculture Commissioner

Cioloș was proposed by the conservatively dominated government under Emil Boc as a member of the EU Commission Barroso II , which started work on February 10, 2010. He remained independent, but was close to the European People's Party (EPP). In his office as EU Agriculture Commissioner, Cioloș campaigned for a reform of the European Union's common agricultural policy by 2013. He aimed to promote organic farming by making EU agricultural subsidies more dependent on criteria such as environmental protection , sustainability and consumer protection . The total amount of agricultural subsidies should not be reduced, but the distribution between the various EU Member States should be more balanced. Farmers who produce for the regional or local market should be placed in a better position than industrial farms. Under his leadership, the Unified Management Committee for Fruit and Vegetables decided to ban open olive oil pots in restaurants.

After the European elections in 2014 , Victor Ponta's center-left government initially wanted to nominate Cioloș for a second term as commissioner. Because of the quota for women, however, she decided in favor of Corina Crețu from the PSD , whereas the Romanian opposition protested because parliament had been bypassed. When the Juncker Commission took office on November 1, 2014, Cioloş left office.

Prime Minister

After the resignation of the Ponta government , Cioloș was elected Prime Minister of Romania on November 17, 2015. He led a so-called technocratic government with non-party ministers. He was followed by Sorin Grindeanu as Prime Minister in January 2017 .

PLUS chairman and member of the European Parliament

In March 2018, Cioloș announced the founding of a new party, initially called Mișcarea România Împreună (“Movement Romania Together”). However, official registration was delayed and eventually abandoned. Instead, Cioloș registered the Partidul Libertății, Unității și Solidarității (PLUS; "Party of Freedom, Unity and Solidarity") in December 2018 . He locates their political orientation “in the area of the center and center-right”.

He ran for the 2019 European elections as the top candidate on the joint list of PLUS and Uniunea Salvați România (USR; “Union Rettet Romania”). This received 22.4% of the vote and eight seats. Since then, Cioloș has been a member of the European Parliament . There he was elected chairman of the liberal group Renew Europe on June 19, 2019 , which was formed by the previous ALDE parliamentary group , the French presidential party La République en Marche and the Romanian alliance USR-PLUS.