The ruling coalition's talks on merging elections should end on Friday, says PNL President Nicolae Ciuca

RADIO ROMANIA NEWS - The Liberals maintain their proposal that the European parliamentary elections be held at the same time as the local elections, but PNL leader Nicolae Ciuca says that the discussions in the governing coalition, which have not yet led to a decision, should end on Friday, when a new meeting is announced. He says the talks broke down yesterday because the two parties failed to reach a consensus on the timing of this year's four rounds of elections, and dismissed the idea that there were disagreements over the presidential candidate or candidates.

Nicolae Ciuca: "At this moment we are discussing the efficiency of the electoral process and we should not get into discussions on what the presidential elections mean, because this is not the time. I believe that any extension beyond Friday is inappropriate and makes no sense. We are still discussing it because, on the one hand, we are occupying the public space with a subject that has been going on for a very long time and, on the other hand, we need to see what other issues are on the government's agenda and need to be resolved."

Earlier, Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu said that the coalition had not reached a consensus on the issue of merging the elections because of the specific nature of each political party. The Social Democrat leader added that the overlapping of elections is likely to be more confusing than helpful. The Permanent Electoral Authority is doing a technical analysis at the moment, he added.

Translated by: Radu Matei