USR PLUS Co-Chair Barna: For us all options are on the table

Co-Chairman of the Save Romania - Freedom, Unity, and Solidarity Party (USR PLUS) Dan Barna said on Wednesday that all options are on the table for his formation. "For us, all options are on the table. We will see how discussions evolve in the following hours and in the government sitting tonight," Dan Barna declared at the House of Parliament at the end of a meeting of USR PLUS lawmakers. He says that the junior governing partner is not against local development, but the way the National Local Development Program looks now makes it an identical copy of the previous programs which were Liviu Dragnea's brain children. "It is important that we have rules and transparency and we proposed a set of amendments that we sent our coalition partners," Barna added. With regard to the "Anghel Saligny" National Investment Program, Deputy Prime Minister and USR PLUS Co-Chairman Dan Barna had stated earlier in the day, before the meeting of the USR PLUS MPs, that this is "a potential moment" of breach of the coalition's cooperation protocol signed "after the Vlad Voiculescu episode", mentioning that he hopes a way is found for the coalition partners to remain in a" functional cooperation". The government meeting scheduled for earlier today was suspended and will be resumed at 19:00 hrs. Prime Minister Florin Citu argued on Wednesday that the approval procedures for the "Anghel Saligny" National Investment Program have been observed but the program was not adopted because of an opinion with observations from the Finance Ministry. Asked if the project will be approved anyway, with the risk of USR PLUS pulling out of government, the Prime Minister replied: "This project will pass. If it has all the approvals and procedures completed, it will pass." USR PLUS Co-Chairman Dacian Ciolos said that the party's ministers did not know that the bill on the "Anghel Saligny" National Investment Program will be on the additional agenda of today's government meeting and that the document does not yet have the endorsements from the Justice and Transport ministries.AGERPRES(RO - author: Catalina Matei, editor: Florin Marin; EN - author: Simona Klodnischi, editor: Maria Voican)