public money

Romanian tourism minister Elena Udrea said she thinks the Parliament should set up inquiry committees for all the liberal ministers of the country’s former government, to check how they spent public money.

Romanian president Traian Basescu on Tuesday pointed to a “dirty” understanding between private television stations and politicians on the free broadcast of some electoral videos in the campaign for the European Parliament elections in exchange for unregistered public money from the candidates.

The secretary general of Romania’s leftist opposition Social Democratic Party, Titus Corlatean, urged Prime Minister Calin Tariceanu Friday to suspend Petre Roman from the position of government representative for Romanians abroad, accusing the latter of using public money to pay for his election campaign.

Each Romanian lawmaker not residing in Bucharest spent a average EUR13,000 for accommodation last year, and some received accommodation money even though they own apartments in Bucharest, the Institute for Public Policies said in a report on public costs for activities of lawmakers in the interval November 2006 - May 2008.

The average Romanian lawmaker spent about EUR7,000 of the state budget per month in 2007, according to a report released Thursday by the Institute for Public Policies, which said it calculated the sum using "incomplete and hard to decipher information” provided by the two Chambers of Parliament.