Résumés and political responsibility

The Liberal Florin Roman stepped down as Minister for Research and Digitisation

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Mihai Pelin, 16.12.2021, 13:50

The Romanian minister for research and digitisation, Liberal Florin Roman, has resigned. He left
the Nicolae Ciucă cabinet less than a month since taking office, following a
journalist investigation into his education and qualifications.

According to journalists,
Florin Roman’s resume includes a B.A. degree he has not obtained, and a
plagiarised B.A. thesis. Moreover, he claims to have published a book, which is
not to be found.

Roman denies the accusations
and claims he stepped down to make sure the image of the Cabinet is not
affected. He argues he is the innocent victim of media and political lynching
tied to deals of tens of billion euros for the implementation of digital solutions
for the Government. His office is temporarily taken over by the energy minister
Virgil Popescu.

Some of the accusations
made by journalists are backed by the leaders of the Babeş-Bolyai University
in Cluj-Napoca, who said Florin Roman never received a degree at this
university, but only a diploma certifying that he attended a college in Alba
Iulia, near Cluj.

Florin Roman was also, for
a while, speaker of the Chamber of Deputies, and is one of the most influential
members of the National Liberal Party. He believes the leader of USR party in
opposition, Dacian Cioloş, has coordinated the attacks against him, and
threatened to sue. In response, Dacian Cioloş, who was a prime minister in
2015-2017, said he was not impressed by the threat, and emphasised that Roman’s
resignation was a necessary step. Florin Roman is
no victim. Florin Roman is the representative of a political class
that destroyed the best Romania had, Dacian Cioloş also said.

Several high-ranking
Romanian politicians have been accused of plagiarism in recent years. Perhaps
the most tale-telling image of this phenomenon came in 2016 from the former
Social Democratic deputy and Bucharest sector 3 mayor Robert Negoiță, accused
of plagiarism in his Ph.D. thesis and prosecuted for it at the time, who said, Everybody
was doing it, so I did, too. Robert Negoiță graduated high-school at the age
of 31, in 2003, and one year after completing his second university programme
in 2009 he was already enrolled in a doctoral programme.

But
the most resounding plagiarism case in Romanian politics involved the former
Social Democratic leader, Victor Ponta, who eventually resigned as prime
minister in 2015, although for different reasons. He was probed into for
copyright infringements in his Ph.D. thesis, but the Prosecutor General’s
Office closed the case.

Other
politicians accused of plagiarism include ex-PM Mihai Tudose, former deputy PM and
defence minister Gabriel Oprea, the ex-interior minister Radu Stroe, and former
defence minister Mihai Stănișoară.

In
2020, Romania ranked 69th in the Transparency International’s
Corruption Perceptions Index. (tr. A.M. Popescu)