Since Adrian Năstase’s time, PSD has been a „political schemes” laboratory aiming to deceive the electorate, create false narratives, crises, and debates to avoid serious and important issues affecting people’s lives.
In this public relations laboratory, complex and resonant operations have been planned, such as, for example, the kidnapping of Romanian journalists in Iraq in 2005, orchestrated by a close and significant funder of the PSD, or August 10, orchestrated by Liviu Dragnea, both aimed at causing significant damage to anti-PSD forces that threatened to diminish the party’s influence.
Over time, the party’s ability to create sophisticated scenarios to mislead public opinion has diminished due to the erosion of trust in the PSD after years of disappointments and corruption scandals.
However, the appetite for conspiracies remains unchanged, and like an old magician who has lost his dexterity and the ability to control the audience, the PSD attempts another trick, hoping to return to power and find someone to blame for the party's failure.
"Parliament avoided - with the PSD vote - the loss of €5.8 billion from the PNRR and facilitated accessing €16.7 billion from the SAFE program!" wrote Sorin Grindeanu victoriously yesterday afternoon on his Facebook page.
A Procedural Trap
In short, Sorin Grindeanu's message is as follows: PSD parliamentarians have done their job. We have voted for all the laws necessary to access SAFE and PNRR funds. The Unified Salary Law remains, but when it's ready, we will vote on it.
What Sorin Grindeanu does not say: The fact that PSD parliamentarians deliberately sabotaged the ANI Law and the Decarbonization Law through submitted amendments and also refused to vote on the Unified Salary Law, sending it back to the Government.
Moreover, through the "Dominic Fritz amendment," visibly unconstitutional, as well as the one amending legislation already funded by the European Commission, referring to the Decarbonization Law amendment, with the refusal to shut down coal-fired power plants, Sorin Grindeanu jeopardizes the last payment requests, €5 billion from the PNRR, creating a procedural trap that could lead to exceeding the August 31 deadline by which all legislation to access the remaining PNRR funds must be adopted and promulgated.
The Swift Reaction of the European Commission
The fact that PSD deliberately did a poor job in Parliament to blame PNL and USR in case of missing the deadline and payments was quickly confirmed by the European Commission, which announced that if unconstitutional amendments and those contradicting the memorandum signed between Romania and the European Commission are not quickly abandoned, billions of euros may not be paid.
Give Back the Money!
In his desperation to remain at the helm of the party and return to power, Sorin Grindeanu gambled on forcing the deadline and losing the money, trying to create a context where the blame for the failure does not fall on PSD, which has allied with AUR in Parliament, but on Ilie Bolojan and Dominic Fritz.
It is hard to believe that many people still fall into the old PSD scams. But it is interesting to note that Grindeanu's led party remains unchanged - the same corrupt and destructive vision, the same methods of finding scapegoats elsewhere and not taking responsibility for anything.
It is very interesting to note that representatives of the European Commission seem to have understood Grindeanu's "trickery" and reacted, not very pleasantly, shortly after the toxic boasting of the PSD leader.
At this point, it is not clear if what PSD and AUR have disrupted can be fixed by August 31. The ANI Law has been challenged at the Constitutional Court and received a fairly quick deadline, August 12.
Regarding the Decarbonization Law, President Nicușor Dan stated that he will not promulgate it and will quickly send it back to Parliament for modifications.
However, it is certain, after the swift reaction of the European Commission, that if the situation created by PSD and AUR does not change quickly, Romania will not receive the remaining billions. Moreover, it will be obliged to refund at least another billion from a payment already made for a commitment to shut down coal-fired power plants.
Blackmailing the President
Sorin Grindeanu may have resorted to such trickery to use the pressure of the PNRR deadline as a bargaining chip with the aim of becoming prime minister in a PSD minority government, supported in Parliament by PNL, USR, and UDMR.
That is, blackmailing Nicușor Dan, Ilie Bolojan, and Dominic Fritz, to whom he conveyed that they have to choose between him as prime minister, with the PNRR laws voted, or legislative failure and loss of funds.
In the coming days, it will be clearer if Grindeanu's gambit will work, but from the initial signs, it seems that, once again, the PSD leader has overestimated his bargaining position, with chances of losing on all fronts.