After less than a month in office, Romanian minister of culture Daniel Breaz is already making headlines. Maybe not in the best possible way, but as Oscar Wilde famously said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
In a recent hearing of Parliament’s cultural committee about his plans during Romania’s revolving presidency which begins on January 1, he said the following.
“This thing has already happened between me and my Austrian colleague in Brussels, two weeks ago. I have taken over, as they say, the bar.”
He used the Romanian word ștachetă (meaning bar, as in high jump) instead of ștafetă (relay baton). Besides his appointment on November 19, this was the only time so far he has featured prominently in national media.
Breaz (43), a mathematician by training and a professor of geometric functions at the 1918 University in Gyulafehérvár/Alba Iulia is also known for his traditional concept on families. He once said that there probably isn’t such a thing as a single-parent family in Romania and in his view a mother with two children “used to be a family, but something happened and they no longer are (a family)”.
