Dacian Cioloș | |
|---|---|
 Cioloș in 2020 | |
| Prime Minister of Romania | |
| In office 17 November 2015 – 4 January 2017 | |
| President | Klaus Iohannis |
| Preceded by | Sorin Cîmpeanu(Acting) |
| Succeeded by | Sorin Grindeanu |
| President ofUSR | |
| In office 1 October 2021 – 7 February 2022 | |
| Preceded by | Dan Barna(USR) Himself(PLUS) |
| Succeeded by | Cătălin Drulă(Acting) |
| Member of the European Parliament forRomania | |
| In office 2 July 2019 – 15 July 2024 | |
| Leader ofRenew Europe | |
| In office 2 July 2019 – 19 October 2021 | |
| Preceded by | Guy Verhofstadt(Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe) |
| Succeeded by | Stéphane Séjourné |
| President ofPLUS | |
| In office 26 January 2019 – 1 October 2021 | |
| Preceded by | Position established |
| Succeeded by | Himself (party merged withUSR) |
| European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development | |
| In office 9 February 2010 – 1 November 2014 | |
| President | José Manuel Barroso |
| Preceded by | Mariann Fischer Boel |
| Succeeded by | Phil Hogan |
| Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development | |
| In office 5 August 2007 – 22 December 2008 | |
| Prime Minister | Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu |
| Preceded by | Decebal Traian Remeș |
| Succeeded by | Ilie Sârbu |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1969-07-27)27 July 1969 (age 56) Zalău, Romania |
| Political party | Independent (before 2018) PLUS (2018–2021) USR (2021–2022) REPER (2022–present) |
| Other political affiliations | EPP (2016–2019) ALDE (2019–present) |
| Spouse | |
| Education | University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine National Graduate School of Agriculture, Rennes University of Montpellier 1 |
Dacian Julien Cioloș (Romanian:[datʃiˈanˈtʃoloʃ]; born 27 July 1969) is a Romanianagronomist who served asPrime Minister of Romania from November 2015 to January 2017. He previously served asAgriculture Minister underCălin Popescu-Tăriceanu between October 2007 and December 2008. In November 2009,European CommissionPresidentJosé Manuel Barroso nominated him to be the nextAgriculture Commissioner, a position he assumed in February 2010 and held until his term expired in November 2014. In November 2015,PresidentKlaus Iohannis named him prime minister; Cioloș assumed office after receiving approval fromParliament.
He remained until after the2016 parliamentary election, which was lost by the parties that called for Cioloș to continue his term. Cioloș is the founder of theFreedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (PLUS) within the larger former political constructionUSR PLUS (2019–2021). Between October 2021 and February 2022, he led theSave Romania Union (USR), into which the party he founded was merged. In May 2019, he waselected aMember of the European Parliament (MEP), subsequently becoming leader of the newRenew Europepolitical group. He relinquished the leadership upon becoming USR president.
In October 2021, following the ousting of Prime MinisterFlorin Cîțu through a motion of no-confidence, President Iohannis nominated Cioloș as Prime Minister-designate but the Parliament rejected the proposal. The following year in May, he quit USR and launched a new party,REPER.
He was born inZalău, but spent much of his childhood with his grandparents in nearbyPericei village, where he developed an interest in farming. After graduating from the agricultural high school inȘimleu Silvaniei in 1987, he attended the Faculty of Horticulture at theUniversity of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine of Cluj-Napoca, earning a horticultural engineer's degree in 1994.[1]
While a student, Cioloș belonged to theRomanian Hearth Union’s youth wing; he states that his activities there were of a cultural nature, and had nothing to do with the party's extreme nationalist stance.[2] He also holds degrees in the economy of agricultural development from theÉcole nationale supérieure agronomique de Rennes and from theUniversity of Montpellier 1, where he respectively earned a master's in 1997 and a doctorate in 2006. He has belonged to the agriculturalthink tank Groupe de Bruges since 2000.[3] Although in Romania Cioloș was a politicalindependent,[4][5] he was affiliated with theEuropean People's Party (EPP) at theEuropean level.[6][7]
From 1991 to 1996, Cioloș completed thirteen months' worth of internships on organic farms in the French region ofBrittany. In the summer of 1995, he prepared a rural development project betweenSavoie andArgeș County, while working at theAveyron agricultural chamber of commerce inRodez during 1997, studying agricultural and rural development in the northern part of thatdepartment. In 1997 and 1999, heinterned as an agro-economist at theEuropean Commission'sDirectorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development inBrussels, helping prepare theSpecial Accession Programme for Agriculture and Rural Development (SAPARD). In 1998–1999, he directed a local rural development programme in Argeș County, again cooperating with Savoie.[3]
From 1999 to 2001, he worked at two agricultural development agencies in France, coordinating joint programmes with Romania in that field. From 2002 to 2003, as part of the European Commission's delegation to Romania, he helped manage SAPARD's implementation in his native country. From January 2005 to May 2007, he was an adviser to Romania's Agriculture Minister, and a representative in theCouncil of the European Union'sSpecial Committee on Agriculture. From May to October 2007, he was undersecretary of state for European affairs at the ministry.[3] Following the resignation ofDecebal Traian Remeș due to a corruption scandal,[8] he was appointed Agriculture Minister in October 2007, serving until the following December, when Tăriceanu'sNational Liberal Party-led government left office aftera parliamentary election.[9]
Early in 2009, he returned to work at the Agriculture and Rural Development DG,[10] and that July,PresidentTraian Băsescu named him to head a one-year commission looking at public agricultural development policies.[11]
In October 2009, theEmil Boc government, hoping to secure theAgriculture portfolio in the secondBarroso Commission, nominated Cioloș as Romania's EU Commissioner.[12] The proposal was criticised by the oppositionNational Liberals (PNL) andSocial Democrats (PSD), who saw it as a last-ditch maneuver by a government on the brink of collapse, as well as by theParty of European Socialists, who believed that the position ought to have gone to a Social Democrat.[5] Boc's cabinet did indeed collapse the day after nominating Cioloș, when it lost amotion of no confidence.[13]
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At the end of November, Barroso nominated Cioloș to the Agriculture position, observing that he was the "most competent" of those submitted for consideration, and lauding his "modern vision" of agriculture and rural development.[14][15] TheBritish magazineFarmers Weekly considered the nomination "a controversial choice", citing recent mismanagement by Romania of EU funds, but also acknowledged his "broad agricultural experience".[16]England and Wales' National Farmers Union as well asScotland's NFU welcomed the appointment.[17]ItalianMinister of AgricultureLuca Zaia[18] andFrenchPresidentNicolas Sarkozy likewise congratulated Cioloș.[19]German news agencyDeutsche Presse-Agentur and British newspaperThe Independent both criticised the nomination due to the funds mismanagement issue, with French dailyOuest-France alleging that the cause of British indignation was the perception that Cioloș would be akin to a second French EU Commissioner, given his close ties to that country.[20]
After winning approval from theEuropean Parliament in February 2010,[21] Cioloș set forth his priority: maintaining a "thriving agricultural sector" in order to ensurefood security, environmental preservation and protection of the countryside, help combatglobal warming and maintain a "fair standard of living" for farmers. As part of this objective, he promised to continue adapting and restructuring theCommon Agricultural Policy.[22]
In July 2015, Barroso's successorJean-Claude Juncker named Cioloș as his special adviser on international food security.[23]
In November 2015,Prime MinisterVictor Ponta resigned following protests sparked by adeadly nightclub fire, andPresidentKlaus Iohannis appointed Cioloș as his successor.[24] The latter proposeda technocratic cabinet composed of twenty-one members, a third of them women.[25] The cabinet won approval fromParliament on a 389–115 vote: the mainSocial Democrats (PSD) andNational Liberals (PNL) were both in favour, although a number of legislators from the former party defied the leadership to vote against the cabinet. Additionally, theAlliance of Liberals and Democrats (ALDE) was opposed.[26][27] He considers his two main achievements while in office to have been an increase in transparency, including the online release of salaries and expenditures for public institutions and financing contracts; and a reduction in bureaucracy that involved the elimination of numerous formalities.[28] Ahead of the2016 parliamentary election, Cioloș received the endorsement on behalf of the National Liberals (PNL) and of theSave Romania Union (USR), in turn urging voters to back either party.[29] When these parties lost the election, the prime minister expressed his regret;[30] the following month, he was succeeded bySorin Grindeanu.[31]
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In March 2018, Cioloș announced the creation of a new political party, the Romania Together Movement.[32]
Because the legal registration of the new political party took too long, Cioloș announced on 15 December 2018 the existence of a new party, already registered by some anonymous collaborators, called theFreedom, Unity and Solidarity Party (Romanian:Partidul Libertății, Unității și Solidarității, PLUS), thus dropping the former political project.[33]
In January 2019, at the first national convention of PLUS, Cioloș was elected president of the newly emerged political party with 99.17% of the votes.[34] The following month, Cioloș announced the establishment of the2020 USR-PLUS Alliance between PLUS and theDan Barna-ledSave Romania Union (USR).[35] That May, hewas elected aMember of the European Parliament.[36] He subsequently became leader of the newRenew Europepolitical group, having secured support fromEn Marche,Ciudadanos and parties from Germany and the Netherlands.[37] He left that post in autumn 2021 in order to focus on domestic politics.[38]
In October 2021, following the merger of USR with PLUS, Cioloș was elected the first president of the unified party, defeating Barna on a 50.9 to 49.1 margin.[39] Later that month, following the collapse of theFlorin Cîțu government, Iohannis once again named Cioloș as prime minister.[40] Cioloș and his proposed cabinet were voted down in Parliament, on a vote of 88–184.[41] In February 2022, after his program was rejected by subordinates in the USR leadership, Cioloș resigned as party president.[42] That May, he quit USR altogether, citing dissatisfaction with the new leadership, and launched a new party,Renewing Romania's European Project (REPER).[43]
At the2024 European Parliament election, REPER failed to secure the threshold, and Cioloș lost his seat.[44] He subsequently announced his withdrawal from electoral politics.[45]
In 2000, Cioloș married Valérie Villemin, a French agriculture expert he met while studying in France. The ceremony took place in his grandparents' village of Pericei. The couple have no children.[46][47][48] He has a younger brother, Sorin.[49] His father insisted onDacian as a first name, while his French middle name comes fromJulien Sorel, protagonist ofThe Red and the Black, a book that Cioloș's mother read while pregnant with him.[50] Cioloș is a member of theRomanian Orthodox Church.[48]
| Political offices | ||
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| Preceded by | Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development 2007–2008 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Romanian European Commissioner 2010–2014 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development 2010–2014 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Prime Minister of Romania 2015–2017 | Succeeded by |
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| New group | Leader ofRenew Europe 2019–2021 | Succeeded by |
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