Dacian Ciolos elected president of USR PLUS to step down as Renew Europe chair

USR PLUS members elected former Commissioner Dacian Ciolos to become the party’s president. Ciolos, who served as chair of the Renew Europe group in the European Parliament since June 2019, said he would resign to focus entirely on USR PLUS.

“I have already told my colleagues from Renew that I will step down. Tomorrow (Monday), I will go to Strasbourg to have a direct discussion with them and organise elections for the new chairperson of the group,” Ciolos told a news conference during the congress of the USR PLUS party in Bucharest.

Ciolos said he will work to build a stronger party and become the main right-wing force in 2024, when local, general, presidential and even the EU Parliament elections will be held in Romania.

Ciolos, a former EU Agriculture Commissioner and former prime minister, obtained a seat in the European Parliament in 2019 on the list of the newly formed alliance, at that time, between USR and PLUS. A founder of PLUS, Ciolos served as co-president of the alliance, later transformed into a party, together with Dan Barna, the leader of USR.

With the support of MEPs from French President Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche, he would become the leader of the Renew Europe group in the EU Parliament after the May 2019 European elections.

But Ciolos said a few weeks ago that he would step down from the position of Renew chair if he is elected president of USR PLUS, so his decision does not come as a surprise.

The race for who will succeed him has, in fact, already started as MEP Sophie In’t Veld said she wants to be the next Renew president.

(Bogdan Neagu | EURACTIV.ro)