Ciucu's reaction, after the defeat suffered in the General Council / Message from Piedone: “Ciprian, come back, father!”

The Mayor of the Capital, Ciprian Ciucu, claimed on Thursday, after the CGMB meeting where several projects did not receive the councilors' vote, that PSD, PPUSL and AUR wanted a “calibration meeting”, to convey that he is dependent on their votes.

“How to understand what happened today in the General Council. PSD, PPUSL and AUR decided not to automatically go with the old majority enjoyed after the local elections by Mr. General Mayor Nicusor Dan and Mr. Interim Mayor Gen, Bujduveanu and they wanted us to have a “calibration session”, to measure the forces, to understand that I am dependent on them to do what I promised the citizens of Bucharest and that, in order to put our city to the point, negotiations are needed. I told them that Bucharest needs a functional majority, and I had delegated to the PSD vice-mayor, since December 2025, all the powers he held before I came to PMB. It seems that it was not enough, now there will be new negotiations, as if from scratch,” wrote Ciprian Ciucu in a post on Facebook.

Ciprian Ciucu stated that some of the rejected projects aimed to abolish some institutions with less than 50 employees, a measure recommended by the Court of Accounts two years ago.

“There are institutions that have one, three, or five employees. These, which we proposed for abolition today, accumulated approximately 7.7 million lei in debt last year. They will continue to accumulate debt, and these will be even greater,” said the mayor.

The mayor also said that he asked the General Council to authorize him to order an evaluation of the management decisions of STB and Termoenergetica, in order to clarify the reasons for the debts that exceed 3 billion lei.

“PSD, PPUSL and AUR did not agree,” Ciucu wrote.

Fare increase for STB tickets, rejected

Regarding the increase in STB tariffs, the mayor of the Capital showed that the initiative belongs to ADITPBI and that the affordability study had been carried out last year, having been voted for by the PSD representative in the AGM.

“Why did we make this decision, to come up with this unpopular project on the agenda? Simple: the situation at STB is (more than) critical and this increase would have given us time to come up with a plan to restructure STB and make the public transport service more efficient. We have already asked ADITPBI, the joint institution of Bucharest and Ilfov, to which the public transport service was delegated and STB to start working on this plan under the coordination PMB, together with the management of STB. ATTENTION!! The public transport service is not in the court of the City Hall, but of this entity, to which the competence to organize public transport in Bucharest and Ilfov has been delegated! Especially since they have not even approved a trivial evaluation.

According to the initiative, the price of the ticket for the trip was to increase by 66%, while the 24-hour pass was to suffer a 75% increase. And other proposals of the liberal failed to vote.

7 PNL councilors, 12 from USR, 3 from REPER and one from Forța Dreptei voted “for” the travel price increase. 14 councilors from PSD, 5 from PPUSL and 3 from PMP abstained. 5 AUR councilors voted against.

Piedone: “The City Hall of the Capital is like a marriage at the beginning: you take it with a dowry“

Cristian Popescu Piedone, former mayor of Sector 5 and former candidate for the Capital City Hall, accused Ciucă of invoking the “heavy legacy” even though his predecessor, Stelian Bujduveanu, who provided the interim, is his party colleague and of trying to play the role of a victim.

“You can't come and complain about the heavy inheritance when your predecessor is your party colleague. I can't believe you when you say that you had no real information about the financial state of the Capital, when brother Bujduveanu reported to you down to the comma. Cipriane, come back to your father! You are the general mayor, now. The Capital City Hall is like a marriage at the beginning: you take it with a dowry, whether it suits you or not,” he wrote Piedone, in a post published on Facebook after the General Council meeting.

The former mayor of Sector 5 also claimed that, at the level of the Capital, “a new political majority” would have taken shape, stating that he was present at the CGMB meeting to see “a helpless mayor, forgotten by his own party”.

“The people who ran and still run the companies today, most of them are from the PNL! They are all the ones who want to increase the costs of a trip to STB and they are all the ones who want to sacrifice sectors of Bucharest for an ode to the new Fata Morgana-type vocalist. The new mayor must understand that he is the mayor of all Bucharesters, not just those who voted for him. I know that the pits do not make politics, neither the garbage nor the culture, but the behavior that brought to light today, stop complaining about a possible bankruptcy and look for solutions. When you take it, it comes with a dowry…open that dowry box and see what else you can save…Ciucule, you're mayor general!”, said Piedone.

Daniel Băluță: “Only the intervention of the general advisers prevented this injustice”

Meanwhile, the mayor of Sector 4 and president of PSD Bucharest, Daniel Băluță, also criticized the proposal regarding the increase in public transport fares.

“Today, at the CGMB meeting, this way of doing administration was unequivocally confirmed by the Mayor General, who proposed the increase (in fact, almost doubling) of STB tariffs for public transport. An unfair measure, which showed, once again, the lack of solutions of the Mayor General, who saw fit to start “solving” the city's critical problems on the backs of Bucharest residents. Only the intervention of the general councilors made this injustice to be prevented”, said Băluță, in a post published after the CGMB meeting on the party's Facebook page.

He stated that the proposal to increase STB tariffs would have shown the “lack of solutions” of the general mayor and argued that the city's critical problems should not be solved “on the backs of the people of Bucharest”.

The leader of the PSD Bucharest also says that he hopes that “Bucharestians will sanction such behavior and be careful, in the future, to the predominant evaluation of the results of the General Mayor, results that are missing from the portfolio of his reign”.