Raluca Turcan picked for deputy prime minister (bio)

On October 24, 2019, Prime Minister-designate Ludovic Orban unveiled the composition of his cabinet that he will submit to the Parliament for a vote. MP Raluca Turcan was picked for the position of deputy prime minister. 

Turcan was born on April 2, 1976, in Botosani, according to cdep.ro. 

She is a class of 1999 graduate of the Faculty of International Economic Relations at the Bucharest School of Economics (ASE). In the same year, she became a master's student in Communication and Public Relations at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA) Bucharest. She holds a diploma in business Russian awarded by the Pushkin Institute in Moscow. April 4, 2011-April 22, 2011, she attended a postgraduate training course in the field of national security and defence at the Carol National Defence University, the National Defence College. 

She also studied politics at ACYPL: Washington, the US; EU legal and institutional framework at the University of Vienna, Austria; politics at the German Marshall Fund Fellowship, the US, as well as political communications at Harvard Kennedy School, Athens. 

She was a Public Relations consultant at Tofan Grup (1999-2000); parliamentary expert in the Romanian Senate (2000-2004); associate professor at Transilvania University of Brasov and at the Romanian-German University in Sibiu (2001-2004), according to cdep.ro. 

Adviser to the chairman of the National Council of the National Liberal Party (PNL), 2000-2002; adviser to the PNL national leader (2002-2004) and a member on the National Management Office of PNL (2004-2006); founding member of the Liberal Democratic Party (PLD). Following the merger of the Democratic Party with the Liberal Democratic Party in December 2007, Turcan held in the newly formed party (PDL), the position of deputy chair between 2007- May 2011 and June 2012-2014. She joined PNL in 2015. 

2014 - December 2016, she was deputy national chair of PNL, chair of the PNL Education Commission. In December 2016, she became interim national chair of PNL, a position she held until June 2017. 

A PNL MP representing Sibiu (2004-2006); non-affiliated MP (Sept. 2006-Feb. 2008) and PDL MP (Feb. 2008-Nov. 2008). In the 2004-2008 legislature, she served as chair of the Committee on Culture, Arts, and the Mass Media (February 2005 - September 2006) and secretary of the Committee on Equal Opportunities between Men and Women. 

In the general election of November 30, 2008 Turcan ran as a PDL candidate for a seat representing the city of Sibiu and won a new term by about 47pct. In that legislature she chaired the Committee on Culture, Arts, and the Mass Media. 

She was re-elected MP of Sibiu on the lists of the ARD (PDL) on December 9, 2012. Until September 2016 she was the secretary of the Committee on Education, Science, Youth and Sports, and then she became the deputy chair of the said committee. She also sat on the UNESCO Joint Standing Committee of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. 

In 2016, she won a new MP seat running on the PNL lists, being also a PNL floor leader. She is a member of the Committee on Education, Science, Youth and Sports and is a deputy chair of the Parliamentary Friendship Group with the French Republic. 

She is an honorary citizen of the US state of Nebraska. 

She has co-authored an English-Russian-Romanian dictionary of business published by ASE Bucharest; co-authored "Integrarea si politica fiscala europeana' (Integration and European fiscal policy), Infomarket Publishing House. She has also published studies in the field of European integration and public relations.