President of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) Kelemen Hunor believes that a stable majority is needed as soon as possible, and the coalition that will be formed must announce whether it has a common candidate for the presidential elections.

"First of all, we need to have the new Parliament formed as soon as possible, ideally around December 20-21, and then, as soon as possible, a stable majority. The most comfortable majority is the one we formed a week ago - PSD [Social Democratic Party], PNL [National Liberal Party], USR [Save Romania Union], UDMR, and minorities, on paper. A political, parliamentary, and governmental stability, but only on paper. It remains to be seen whether it will function or not. There are also other less stable alternatives, in terms of the number of parliamentarians, but still, there is a majority in formats such as PSD, PNL, UDMR, minorities or PSD, PNL, USR, minorities. These are the alternatives through which you can form a majority. But that's not the most important thing... We must understand that if we don't figure out what needs to be done after the parliamentary election vote and the first round of the presidential elections, next year, when the presidential elections take place, it will be even worse," said UDMR leader Kelemen Hunor in an interview with RFI.

According to him, the coalition that will be formed must address several important issues related to governance, one of which concerns the designation of a common candidate for the presidential elections.

"We need to divide this into two stages. We need to say that the first stage is before the presidential elections. In the coalition agreement, we must state when the presidential elections will take place, and we must decide whether we have a common candidate. The name of the candidate does not necessarily have to be mentioned, but if we don't say that there will be a common candidate for the governing coalition, we will make the same mistake that PSD and PNL made - they entered the presidential elections with two candidates, and neither of them reached the second round. Also, we need to specify the election date, because, in my opinion, by March, at the latest the end of March or the beginning of April, we must have the presidential elections, depending on the calendar. But we cannot push it to June, six months later, because that means we did not understand anything from what has happened in recent years, and that would be a fatal mistake," explained the UDMR president.

When asked if he would agree with the first coalition variant, he mentioned that it is "the safest one at the moment."

"But this means that USR also has to accept that we go with one candidate. (...) This would be the safest and most stable coalition. Someone must remain in opposition, someone who has the capacity to grow and become the leader of the opposition in the medium term. I don't know who has this capacity. I don't want to go into details because in Romania we no longer have large parties; the era of large parties ended after the parliamentary election. Even PSD, which is now the largest party in Parliament, has only 22%, not even 30%. PNL is no longer the second party. There needs to be huge responsibility from the leaders, we need statesmen, and certainly, if USR remains in opposition, it is their decision if that happens, but we must be aware that the government formed in December, January will stay until the presidential elections... I rule out the possibility of a candidate from the far-right winning because I believe we have learned enough from this November-December adventure. We must be aware that we need a strong candidate from this side, the European side. I am not saying pro, because we are in Europe, and we don't want to go outside Europe," said Kelemen Hunor. AGERPRES (RO - author: Catalina Matei, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - editor: Adina Panaitescu)