Having Romanian Adrian Severin elected as the chief of the EU diplomacy would have been very difficult, bearing in mind that an East European representative, namely Jerzy Buzek, was already holding an important EU role - the European Parliament speaker, Romanian European commissioner Leonard Orban declared, quoted by RFI.
"It is extremely difficult to obtain such a position. Why? Because there had already been a person to have a very important role, namely the European parliament speaker, a representative of a new member state, Mr. Buzek, who is Polish. In this case, there was little chance left that another person coming from the new member states occupied one of the roles left at the community level. Therefore, this was a significant handicap", the European commissioner explained.
Plus, he speaks about the support that Severin's counter-candidate Massimo D'Alema received from the socialist group. "The moment it has been decided at the socialist group level which person to be supported, I would like to remind you that Mr. D'Alema received a very strong support in a certain period. So there have been several factors which brought their contribution and which war rendering Mr. Severin's election in this position extremely difficult", Orban added. He made reference to the fact that Martin Schulz, the leader of the EP socialites and Severin's "direct chief" expressed his support for the Italian.
The lack of support from his country, or rather the fact that a socialist party isn't in power in Romania had an impact as well. Orban is diplomatically giving D'Alema as example: "Of course, the support of the country is very important in getting a role. Let's just say that there have been Italian newspapers that read that the Italian D'Alema could not be elected because he does not have the support of a socialist Government in Italy". Having
