Hubert Thuma summons Ilie Bolojan to clarify whether he agrees with the “attack” on his advisor. “Unacceptable”

The head of the Ilfov County Council, Hubert Thuma, asked Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan to specify whether he supports the position of his honorary councilor, Vlad Gheorghe, regarding the assimilation of Ilfov into a metropolitan Bucharest.

“I want to publicly ask the Prime Minister of Romania if he is aware of his subordinate's statements to the liberal administration in Ilfov and if he agrees with this position. I find it unacceptable that a simple councilor would launch such an attack against the 540,000 registered residents of Ilfov county (in reality, over 1 million). The public consultation is an important topic that trained people must talk about,” he wrote on Tuesday evening Thuma on Facebook.

He mentioned that he could publish “100 pictures of unpaved or paved streets in the Capital, without water and sewerage”, but claims that he wants a collaboration for “the real solution of the problems”.

“We are talking about a dialogue that various advisors without expertise should not have access to. An individual who was told to go home by the citizens who did not vote for him, but also by his former party colleagues who breathed a sigh of relief when they saw him leave, is talking about popular consultation in this sense,” said PNL president Ilfov.

Thuma also claimed that “an indisputable reality is that Ilfov county is better administered than Bucharest at the moment”.

“With infinitely fewer resources than the Capital, we annually manage to allocate more than two-thirds of the money we have to development. That is, to investments in infrastructure. As for the Ilfov budget for 2026, I am waiting for the meeting that Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan promised me. With figures, with arguments, I support the allocation to Ilfov of 5% of the IVG collected in Bucharest. I have said on several occasions that, until it is done administrative-territorial reorganization, I always agree to make a common budget with Bucharest which we then distribute equally to every citizen in the metropolitan area. If this logic were followed, the budget of CJ Ilfov would increase at least three times”, wrote the head of CJ Ilfov.

Referendum for the abolition of Ilfov county, proposed by a councilor of Bolojan

Honorary adviser to the prime minister, Vlad Gheorghe, proposed on Tuesday the organization of a referendum on the assimilation of Ilfov into a metropolitan Bucharest. “Abolishing the Ilfov County Council would bring significant savings,” Gheorghe wrote in a Facebook post.

He also cited the fact that “many useless bodies” that function as associations between the Capital and Ilfov would thus be abolished.

The proposal of Bolojan's councilor came after Thuma announced that he would discuss with the mayors of Ilfov on the topic of a referendum on the storage of waste from Bucharest in the county.

Asked, at Tuesday's press conference at the Government, what he thinks of his advisor's proposal, Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said that he did not have time to look at “posts or aspects related to proposals related to such aspects”, according to Agerpres.

“From this morning until today I was caught up in the discussions related to these important projects, I was in the meetings related to the budget, and please believe me that I did not get to look at the posts or aspects related to proposals related to such issues,” said Bolojan.

Conflict in the PNL

Thuma is the leader of the anti-Bolojan faction of the PNL and accused the president of the political formation earlier this month of “USR-izing” the party and of deliberately undermining liberal candidates in the 2024 and 2025 presidential elections.

Thuma also said that Bolojan was part of a plan that made the presidential candidates Ciucă and Antonescu vulnerable.

More precisely, Thuma claims that the polls prior to the 2024 presidential elections showed that Nicolae Ciucă could not win the electoral race, so it was proposed to Ilie Bolojan to run. However, he not only did not want to, but also made unreasonable proposals for the PNL.

Then, in the presidential elections of 2025, Bolojan did not publicly deny for months, Thuma reproaches him, that he will be the PNL candidate. All this was premeditated, Thuma claims.