Dan Barna to run in presidential elections for Alliance 2020 USR PLUS; Ciolos - PM (sources)

USR (Save Romania Union) leader Dan Barna will be running in the presidential elections for the Alliance 2020 USR PLUS, while Dacian Ciolos will be the Prime Minister proposal, sources from the Alliance told AGERPRES on Friday. The two political entities involved in this alliance, USR and PLUS (Liberty, Unity and Solidarity Party), have reached a protocol after negotiations on Friday, with the next step to be its validation by the National Bureau of the USR and the National Council of PLUS. USR Deputy Ionut Mosteanu has told AGERPRES that negotiations will continue for the local and parliamentary elections. "The news that hit the public space [namely that Dan Barna will be the presidential candidate - editor's note] came from sources from the meeting of the USR and PLUS negotiation committees. However, I will talk to Dan Barna and my colleagues first, to see what they discussed there, but this seems to be the direction of negotiations so far and it's also what I expected. Meaning that we said it before we will continue together and also that we will probably have Dan Barna running in the presidential elections and Dacian Ciolos as a Prime Minister proposal. In the next interval we are going to conclude an electoral protocol to be ratified by the Political Committee due on August 3, an electoral protocol of the alliance and, basically, we will conclude thus the discussions for this round of the elections, the presidential ones, following the two committees to meet later and come up with solutions for the next elections, the local and parliamentary elections," said Ionut Mosteanu. AGERPRES (RO - author: Cornelia Dumitru, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)