On
December 9, 2012, Romanian voters approved of the coalition of the then-current
Prime Minister Victor Ponta, by a two-thirds majority. However, because Ponta
had been in a bitter political feud with President Traian Basescu—Ponta’s
coalition tried and failed to impeach the president—it was not clear that the
president would nominate Ponta for prime minister even though that post must be
approved by the parliament. Basescu did wind up nominating Ponta. The
interesting point here is that President Barroso of the European Commission
publicly waded into the choice on behalf of Ponta.
The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, which is available at Amazon in print and as an ebook.