Ilan Laufer Appointed Honorary Government Counsellor

The appointment comes just weeks after Laufer was rejected by President Klaus Iohannis for the office of regional development minister, during a government reshuffle proposed by Dancila.

Following the president’s refusal, Laufer held a press conference in which he denounced the act as “anti-Semitic” and said that Iohannis was seeking to “block Romania’s relations with Israel”.

He later retracted the statements and offered an apology.

Ilan Laufer was business environment minister in the Mihai Tudose cabinet, between June 2017 and January 2018, after previously serving as a state secretary and counsellor in the ministry.