The Mayor of the Capital, Ciprian Ciucu, on Saturday’s protest: “I don’t know of any permit application having been submitted by the AUR party. We do not want what happened in France to happen in Romania.”

AUR leader George Simion announced a protest for Saturday, November 14, starting at 10:00 a.m., in front of the Bucharest City Hall, amid the dispute over the approval of a rally in support of Călin Georgescu. Simion claims that General Mayor Ciprian Ciucu is restricting the freedom of public assembly and says that participants from several counties are expected at the protest.

Bucharest Mayor Ciprian Ciucu said Thursday, regarding Saturday’s protest, that he was not aware of having received any authorization request from AUR and mentioned that a committee of city hall specialists is evaluating these requests.

“I am not aware of having received any authorization request from the AUR party. I haven’t seen one. Ask Mr. Simion where he submitted it; I haven’t seen such an authorization. These matters are handled by specialists, who assess certain risks. I know it is a very important match, and these specialists, so far, have been asked to approve cultural events, not protests; as far as I understand, they said they had identified all kinds of calls for violent protests on social media. And they make these recommendations; the Commission makes decisions based on these recommendations. So the mayor does not make the decision. If it were my decision, I would not shy away from it, and it would be very simple, but a committee of specialists is clearly assessing the situation, because we do not want what happened in France to happen in Romania. We do not want that, I believe,” said Bucharest Mayor Ciprian Ciucu when asked whether he had approved Saturday’s rally in Izvor Park.