NATO Deputy Secretary General Mircea Joane said on Europa FM on Friday that he will make a decision on a possible run for Romania’s presidency after his NATO mandate ends in October 2024.

“I am a person who already has an inoculation from Romanian politics, and I am a person who is much more careful about what Romanian politics means. The fact that I am very interested in Romania and the struggle for the future of Romania in what I write about in the book is something else. (..) I have full freedom to fulfill my duty professionally until the last day of my mandate in NATO. It is right, it is moral, it is professional. I make no exception to this rule. After I’m done with NATO, we’ll meet again, we’ll discuss again,” said NATO’s Deputy Secretary General, quoted by News.ro.

Asked how long his mandate as NATO’s deputy secretary general would last, Joanne said: “We have a three-year contract, including the contract with the secretary general. And it was extended, now it is the tenth year. And he will leave in September. I have a one-year contract extension and another year, so I’ll probably do well if they ask me to stay. And I usually have a contract until October, that is, for five years. This way you can finish faster, no one is tied to glia. But my contract is until October.”

Joana showed that NATO members should elect a new Secretary General. “This is a process that belongs exclusively to allies, including my position. I am not only the first person from the East to hold this position, I am the first politician to hold the number two position. Therefore, I am not indifferent to the selection of the new Secretary General. I worked with Jens Stoltenberg as two very good friends – we knew politics very well. I have a passage in the book where I tell how our meeting at NATO took place, when he recruited me and gave me this job,” he said.

“I really, really care about the organization I serve. This is very important and therefore I will take the right decision at the right time together with the Secretary General, perhaps with the new Secretary General. They stop me on the street and ask if I’m going to run for office, and I honestly tell them that I don’t know, I have work. After I finish there, we will discuss and see what we should do,” Joane added.