BUCHAREST (Romania), March 12 (SeeNews) - Romania's government on Wednesday called local elections for June 1, Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu said.
"We decided to respect as precise as possible the four-year mayoral mandates [...] In 2004 the elections were held on June 6," Tariceanu told a news conference.
Voting will start at 7 o'clock a.m. local time (0500 GMT) and will end at 9 p.m. (1900 GMT), he said. The second round will be held two weeks later, on June 15.
Some 66 million lei ($27.6 million/17.86 million euro) were allocated for organising the elections, Tariceanu said.
In Romania the local elections date is set by the government and does not need to be approved by the parliament or the president.
At the last local elections in 2004 the two main opposition parties at that time, the Democratic Party (PD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL), won the vote in the capital Bucharest and other major cities. However, the then ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) won the largest number of mayoral seats.
The local elections are widely seen as a dress rehearsal for the presidential and parliamentary polls in the country which joined the European Union last year. Romania will hold parliamentary elections later this year and a presidential vote is due in 2009.
PNL and their allies, the Democratic Union of the Hungarians in Romania (UDMR), hold around 20% of the seats in the 462-seat bicameral parliament of Romania and rule the country in a minority government.
(1 euro = 3.6942 Romanian lei)
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