MEP Muresan: Hopefully, elections will clearly show anti-European parties are a minority in Romania

Our objective is for the joint Social Democratic Party (PSD) - National Liberal Party (PNL) ticket is to win at least half plus one of Romania's MEP seats in order to clearly show at European level that Romania remains on its pro-European path and that anti-European parties are clearly a minority in Romania, just as they are a minority elsewhere in Europe, MEP Siegfried Muresan (EPP) told a news briefing with Romanian journalists on Tuesday.

He added that the decision to have a joint ticket "of two competing parties so far that continue to remain competitors locally and will probably be competitors in the future" existed in other EU member states as well, citing as an example the previous election to the European Parliament and the recent legislative elections in Poland, where "all European forces united to fight the anti-European party that attacked the rule of law."

Regarding the convention of the congress of the European People's Party to be held next week in Bucharest, a first reason why Muresan proposed organising this event in Romania is to increase the visibility of European themes in the country, which helps better inform people and decrease the risk of them being victims of disinformation.

"The second reason is that Romania has acted in full European spirit in recent years, both during the coronavirus pandemic and since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russian armed forces. Romania has always believed in European solutions, we have not taken unilateral measures, not even in difficult situations. We proved that we think in the European spirit, and I believe that this convention will be a good opportunity to show that Romania believes in Europe, and also that Europe believes in Romania."

Muresan added that, by coming to a member state in Central and Eastern Europe, the European People's Party shows its support and solidarity with all Central and Eastern European states, which especially in the last two years, since the start of the war in Ukraine, have made substantial efforts to help the large number of Ukrainian refugees.

The EPP Congress convention in Bucharest will formalise Ursula von der Leyen's candidacy for re-election at the helm of the European Commission, debate the EPP strategy for the election to the European Parliament on June 6-9 and adopt a political manifesto for the European party.

Muresan also said that in the June election to the European Parliament EPP will win the most votes and that the three main groups that currently have a majority in the European Parliament (EPP, S&D and Renew) will keep it.

He also anticipates that extremist parties will not significantly increases at the moment. "We have two anti-European groups, the European Conservatives and Reformers (ECR) group and the Identity and Democracy (ID) group. Together, these two groups have 125 MEPs, plus 50 unaffiliated MEPs who are mostly Eurosceptics. (...) I estimate that their number will remain approximately the same." (AGERPRES)