AGERPRES special correspondent Florin Stefan reports: Save Romania Union (USR) MEP Dan Barna on Tuesday accused an arrangement between the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) that he says attempted to block protection measures for farmers, after PSD MEP Andi Cristea co-signed an amendment with AUR lawmakers that was ultimately not put to the vote.
The bilateral safeguard clauses for agricultural imports from Mercosur countries were approved by the European Parliament with a large majority of 483 votes to 102 and 67 abstentions. Thirty Romanian MEPs backed the regulation, including almost the entire Romanian delegations from the EPP, S&D and the European Conservatives and Reformists, as well as non-affiliated MEPs Diana Iovanovici-Sosoaca and Luis Lazarus.
Barna criticised AUR and PSD for signing an amendment that could not be voted on, as putting any amendment to a vote would have invalidated the agreement already reached on the safeguard clauses.
"AUR is a party of lies, irresponsibility and indifference towards farmers," Barna said after the vote, adding that those who claimed the Mercosur agreement failed to protect farmers "have now shown their true face, in an AUR-PSD twinning, trying to block precisely the protective measures for farmers."
Asked which PSD MEP had aligned with AUR, Barna pointed to his colleague Andi Cristea.
Pressed on whether the episode could trigger tensions in the governing coalition in Bucharest, Barna said he hoped what happened in Strasbourg "was an accident".
Commenting on Barna's accusations, PNL MEP Siegfried Muresan said that "regarding the sometimes accidental, sometimes perhaps programmatic collaboration between PSD and AUR, I have not seen anything good for Romania come out of this alignment so far."
Cristea said he voted for the safeguard clause and declined to comment on Barna's statements.
"Today I voted for this safeguard clause because I believe, together with my colleagues from the Social Democratic Party, that only by voting for it can we shelter our farmers from possible disruptions arising from the Mercosur agreement," he told journalists.
According to information available to AGERPRES, Cristea was the only PSD MEP who maintained his signature on an amendment initially supported by the entire delegation in December, stipulating that any support fund for farmers affected by tariff cuts should not be financed from the Common Agricultural Policy crisis reserve. The plenary ultimately decided that these amendments would not be put to the vote.
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