Controversial regulations with respect to doctorate theses

The possibly plagiarized doctorate thesis of Victor Ponta will be verified Friday, in a session held by the National Committee of Attestation of Titles, Degrees and University Certificates (CNATDCU), even though the current committee was dissolved Thursday by order of the interim minister of education.

Both the interim minister of Education, Liviu Pop, and his executives attended the gathering, at which the former members of the committee were also present.

Liviu Pop left the meeting saying that the 20 present members will be part of the future committee, which will consist of 45 members.

”I had a constructive discussion with the members of the committee. I assured them that they would be nominated in the future committee” the interim minister said, and added that he had not had any discussion about the plagiarism allegations brought against Victor Ponta.

In his opinion, when plagiarism allegations are brought up, the National Ethics Committee is the only competence in the matter, and added that he will send his executives to the National Council of Attestation of Degrees because ” other serious elements in the organization, the interference of several factors” had come to his attention.

”Until Wednesday or Thursday, we must assemble a new general committee that the present members will be part of ” he added.

Liviu Pop claimed that he had presented himself to the headquarters of the committee ” to communicate a message to the academic medium, to assure its contingency that I have nothing against them and dispel any impression that they will be dismissed ”.

He argued that more members were needed because ” the number of universities is constantly increasing” and that the committee lacks representatives of foreign universities..

” It is necessary for the decision making committees to employ experts from abroad, not just co-nationals” he said.

“Today is the last day of my mandate”

The minister’s order by which the general committee is to be restructured was published Friday in the official monitor.

Liviu Pop based his decision to reorganize CNATDCU on the fact that it is inconceivable that there should be two institutions with the same attributions.

When asked why he had reached this decision precisely today of all days, when the members of the committee were scheduled to analyse the doctorate thesis of Victor Ponta, the minister replied ” because today is my last day as interim minister”.

He declared for Mediafax that the committee had been notified on 21st of June to present a written report until June the 28th on the human resources of the educational and research activities in higher education, based on several specific indicators and the number of inspections of the circumstances in which the contests for university professor positions take place, the number of notifications received and analyzed, the validating criteria for doctorate theses and how many of them had been analysed.

Given that Thursday, the CNATDCU committee had not presented any of the requested reports, the minister issued an order by which the committee was dissolved, as confirmed Friday morning in the Official Monitor.

The order also proposed the increase of the number of members of the committee from 21 to 45, including representatives from all universities.
Victor Ponta will resign if the verdict of plagiarism is given.

Professor Mircea Miclea, member of the CNATDCU committee, declared that the plagiarism charges brought against Victor Ponta were among the orders of business on the committee’s agenda given that the institution’s attribution was precisely to attest degrees, and argued that it refuses not to comply with its attributions.

The professor added that the first order of business of the meeting was the raport solicited by the minister.

”The report is complete, but it couldn’t be signed by the president, dr.prof Marius Andruh, because he is abroad. He talked to mister Pop on the phone and informed him that he would return to Bucharest Thursday night and that the report would be handed to him by Friday ” Mircea Miclea added.

Prime Minister Victor Ponta has been accused of plagiarism by Nature, a magazine that claims to possess documents from an unknown source, documents that would indicate that more than half of the prime minister ’s thesis on the International Criminal Court contains plagiarized texts.

Victor Ponta had initially stated that he would renounce his doctorate title if proven by the specialized committee of the ministry of education that he had made a mistake by citing in the bibliography section the names of the authors he had quoted , and not in footnotes of the pages.

Thursday however, in an interview for El Pais, the vice president stated that he would assume any responsibility should his thesis be proved to have been plagiarized and that he would surely resign, responding positively to the question of whether he would resign should this be the case.

The prime minister claimed that this problem emerged due to the conflict between him and the President about Romania’s representation at the EU Council.

” I started writing the thesis in 1999 and since then I have been a minister in many different governments, vice president of the Parliament and for the past two years I have been the leader of the party. I respected every existing law .

I asked the ethics committee of the ministery of education to verify my thesis and I am convinced that I will be proven to be innocent of any plagiarism charges.
Unfortunately, this is a political attack of the President because I declared my right to attend the Bruxelles summit ”.



Translated by
Vlad Nichita
MTTLC, Bucharest University