Romanian Parliament Approves New Government

With 237 votes in favour and only two against, the Romanian parliament on Thursday approved the government of Prime Minister Mihai Razvan Ungureanu.

“It’s time to start working for our country. I hope I will never disappoint you, although I know I have a difficult mission," Ungureanu told lawmakers.

The leftist opposition of Social Democrats and Liberals boycotted the vote, saying they would contest the decision to form a new government in the Constitutional Court.

Several opposition party members were however in parliament at the time of the vote. One of them, Victor Ponta, head of the Social Democratic Party, gave a conciliatory speech, asking Ungureanu to be a prime minister for the people and not for the country’s president Traian Basescu. His speech triggered discontent among other members of the opposition.

Ungureanu, 44, who previously served as the head of the foreign intelligence service, was asked on Monday by Basescu to form a new government. The move followed the resignation of Emil Boc, who announced he was quitting as prime minister early on Monday amid continuing political and social unrest.

On Wednesday, Ungureanu announced his list of 16 ministers. The average age of the ministers in the proposed government is 46, making it the youngest government in Romania so far.

"The reforms will go on, what I am going to bring will be just the contribution made by a good administrator, who has a logic of efficiency first of all," Ungureanu said in a speech. "This is a government that deserves trust and is ready to prove that this is a change of political generation and of governing principles."

Romania is dependent on a 20 billion euro rescue package from the IMF, the European Union and the World Bank. It obtained the loan in May 2009 in exchange for agreeing to push through austerity measures aimed at taming the country’s deficit.

In July 2010 the government cut civil servants' wages by 25 per cent, while thousands of state jobs were axed and VAT was increased by five percentage points to 24 per cent.

Falling wages and the effects of the austerity measures prompted thousands of people to take to the streets across the country over the past month, demanding the resignation of both the government and President Basescu.