Marcel Ciolacu

Ion-Marcel Ciolacu (born 28 November 1967) is a Romanian politician who currently serves as the Prime Minister of Romania.

He is also the leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD).

Marcel Ciolacu participated in the 1989 Romanian Revolution in Buzău, but a recent investigation by independent news organization Recorder has put these claims under scrutiny, having revealed a series of inconsistencies in his account and the lack of supporting evidence for his participation in the 1989 Romanian Revolution.

He became a member of the National Salvation Front in 1990.

In 1995 he obtained a law degree from the Ecological University of Bucharest, which was authorized in May 1995.

During the early nineties, Ciolacu climbed the steps in local politics, and by 1996, had become the second-in-command of the Youth Organization of the party.

Senator Ion Vasile became the godfather of his child.

He remained little known, however, until the mid-2000s.

In 2005, he was for several months the interim prefect of Buzau, after which he became, in turn, director of Urbis Serv and deputy mayor of Buzau (2008–2012), while Constantin Boșcodeală was mayor of Buzau (1996–2016).

In 2008 he attended a program in Security and National Defence at the National College of Defence in Bucharest, a controversial university, regarded by some Romanian publications as a "diploma-factory".

In 2012 he completed a master's programme in the Management of the Public Sector at the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration.

Ciolacu entered national politics in 2012, when he was first elected for a deputy seat in Parliament.

Boșcodeală was later convicted in 2015 for abuse of office during the period 2002–2008, by diverting public funds to a football team and other private companies of which he was a shareholder.

In 2015, he was elected PSD president for Buzău County, replacing Boșcodeală who stepped down while being investigated.

Ciolacu's election was controversial.

He ran against Senator Vasile Ion, who eventually withdrew from the race, accusing Ciolacu of rigging the internal elections.

Ciolacu was re-elected to Parliament in 2016.

In 2017, Ciolacu was named deputy prime minister in the cabinet led by Mihai Tudose.

Tudose's predecessor, Sorin Grindeanu was ousted from his position by a vote of no-confidence initiated by PSD itself, then under the leadership of Liviu Dragnea.

Grindeanu's departure did not leave Dragnea's power unquestioned.

Previously, the government had held a 295 majority, now it was reduced to a mere 241.

For the first time, Dragnea was facing strong dissent in the party at the prospect that President Klaus Iohannis would not name another PSD member to become prime minister, electing instead to force early elections.

Since the procedure of calling early elections laid down in the Constitution of Romania is complicated and difficult to trigger, and seeing PSD still had the necessary majority to form another government, the president decided to name Mihai Tudose, Dragnea's newest proposal as ,prime minister.

Tudose was not, however, Dragnea's first choice and, the PSD leader needed to find ways to control him better than Grindeanu, who had shown him that the office of prime minister was strong enough to allow its holder to wrestle his power in the party away from him.

For this reason, Ciolacu was named deputy prime minister in the Tudose Cabinet, inorder to become Dragnea's ears in the government.

Like Tudose himself and Grindeanu before him, however, Ciolacu did not stay loyal to Dragnea for long.

By the autumn of 2017, Ciolacu had entered Tudose's grasp and was now fully loyal to the prime minister.

As a previously little-known politician outside of Buzău County, where he owns a pastry shop and a consulting firm, Ciolacu came into national prominence when he became the deputy prime minister in 2018 in the cabinet of Prime Minister Mihai Tudose.

Allegedly, he was given this office in order to report Tudose's activities to Liviu Dragnea, who had been unable to become prime minister himself and was wary of Tudose becoming a power player in the party.

Ciolacu soon broke with Dragnea and became an ally of Tudose against Dragnea's leadership.

After Tudose's resignation, Ciolacu was marginalized within PSD but still retained the leadership of PSD Buzău.

Ciolacu once again returned to prominence in 2019 after Liviu Dragnea had been convicted on abuse of office and incitement to intellectual forgery charges, having to serve a 3 years, 6 months sentence.

With the Social Democrats still controlling a majority both in the Chamber and in the Senate, Ciolacu won the position of President of the Chamber of Deputies, with 172 votes for and 120 against, previously held by Dragnea himself.

Following the overwhelming defeat of new PSD leader Viorica Dăncilă in the 2019 Romanian presidential election, on November 26th, 2019, Ciolacu was named leader of the party, firstly ad-interim, until he was confirmed to hold the position by the party congress the next year on the 22nd of August 2020 with an overwhelming 1310–91 margin against his opponent.

Ciolacu led the party to victory in the 2020 Romanian legislative election but was not able to form a majority coalition in the new legislative.

Other parties opposed to the PSD formed a new coalition on December 23 with the new government, thus pushing Ciolacu's PSD into opposition.

However, in 2021, following the political crisis that led to the collapse of the Cîțu Cabinet, he managed to bring the PSD back to the government, forming a cabinet with its former rival, the National Liberal Party, thus forming the National Coalition for Romania.

His premiership was described by opposition figures as illiberal and authoritarian, being accused of limiting press freedom.

He was also accused of economic mismanagement: under Ciolacu, Romania reached the highest external debt, while inflation reached 7.3%, the highest in the European Union (where the average is 3.1%), and the second-highest in all of Europe, only behind Turkey (as of February 2024).

Marcel Ciolacu was born in Buzău as the son of Ion Ciolacu, a career military pilot.