Maria Grapini (born 7 November 1954) is a Romanian businesswoman and politician. She served as the Deputy Minister in the

Second Ponta cabinet Ponta II Cabinet was the Council of Ministers which governed Romania from 21 December 2012 to 5 March 2014. A crisis inside the ruling coalition, the Social Liberal Union (USL), resulted in the split of the governing alliance and collapse of the g ...

. Since 2014, Grapini has been a

Member of the European Parliament A Member of the European Parliament (MEP) is a person who has been elected to serve as a popular representative in the European Parliament. When the European Parliament (then known as the Common Assembly of the ECSC) first met in 1952, its ...

for the

Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D) is the political group in the European Parliament of the Party of European Socialists (PES). The Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats was officially founded as a Socialist ...

Early life and education

Grapini was born on 7 November 1954. She graduated from the

Berești Berești is a town in Galați County, Romania. It is situated in the historical region of Western Moldavia Moldavia ( ro, Moldova), also called Western Moldavia or Romanian Moldavia, is the historic and geographical part of the former Principal ...

Theoretical High School in 1973 and the

Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași The Gheorghe Asachi Technical University ( ro, Universitatea Tehnică „Gheorghe Asachi” din Iași; acronym: TUIASI) is a public university located in Iași, Romania. Classified by the Ministry of Education as an ''advanced research and educat ...

in 1978.

Career

Grapini held various positions at the Garofita Textile Enterprise in Timișoara until 1989. Between 1995 and 2012, she was the president of the Council of Administration and general manager of . She also served as the president of the Council of Administration of SC Pasmatex Conf International SA from 1998 to 2012. Grapini was the president of both the Women Entrepreneurs Association of Romania and the Light Industry Employers Federation. She was a member of the National Council of Exporters and Honorary

Consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throug ...

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

in Romania.

Political activity

Between 2006 and 2015, Grapini was the vice president of the

Conservative Party The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right. Political parties called The Conservative P ...

(PC). In June 2015, Grapini announced her resignation from the party. She accused PC President Daniel Constantin of seizing the party and being responsible for its disappearance following the decision of unifying it with the Liberal Reformist Party. A month later, Grapini joined the Humanist Power Party. In 2012, Grapini was elected as the deputy of the 37th constituency at

Timiș County Timiș () is a county ('' județ'') of western Romania on the border with Hungary and Serbia, in the historical region of Banat, with the county seat at Timișoara. It is the westernmost and the largest county in Romania in terms of land area. T ...

. On 19 December 2012, she was appointed as the Minister for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, Business and Tourism Environment in the Second Ponta cabinet.

Member of the European Parliament, 2014–present

In January 2014, the PC announced Grapini's resignation from the position due to her candidacy in the

2014 European Parliament election The 2014 European Parliament election was held in the European Union, from 22 to 25 May 2014. It was the 8th parliamentary election since the first direct elections in 1979, and the first in which the European political parties fielded candid ...

. She later resigned from Parliament for the same reason. In the election, the PC ran candidates on common lists with the PSD and UNPR; Grapini was the fifth candidate. The alliance won with 37.6% of the votes, and Grapini was elected. Grapini was re-elected at the

2019 European Parliament election in Romania European Parliament elections were held in Romania on 26 May 2019. Background Social Democratic Party (PSD) In April 2019, the Party of European Socialists (PES) announced on Wednesday that it would freeze relations with the Social Democra ...

. Although not officially registered with the party, Grapini was the sixth candidate on the PSD list. In addition to her committee assignments, Grapini is part of the European Parliament Intergroup on Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs).

Published works

Grapini has published four books. The first was published in 2011 and contains interviews that Grapini had over time at Radio Timișoara. In 2012, she published a novel, ''Viața, între scrieri și trans-scrieri'', which contained a critical presentation signed by . In an investigation published by ''Recorder'', journalist Mihai Voinea showed that the novel contained several fragments copied from Wikipedia.

Criticism

Grapini has attracted media criticism due to her frequent spelling and punctuation mistakes in her Facebook account. In July 2015, a website named Grapinizer was launched, allowing users to convert grammatically correct

Romanian language Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Moldova, Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communi ...

text into her writing style: " tadds redundant commas, changes the order of letters within words, and removes blanks spaces after punctuation marks." In August 2018, Grapini appealed to the

National Council for Combating Discrimination The National Council for Combating Discrimination ( ro, Consiliul Național pentru Combaterea Discriminării, or CNCD) is an agency of the Romanian government, established in 2001 and responsible for applying Romanian and European Union anti-discr ...

due to a Facebook message. In the message, she offended the Romanian diaspora at an anti-government rally in the Victory Square, saying they had to "pay dumb taxes for the

USR USR may refer to: * USRobotics, a technology firm * USR (Guadeloupe football club), in Sainte-Rose, Guadeloupe * U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, a fictional robot manufacturer * /usr, directory in Unix systems, see Filesystem Hierarchy Standard ...

". Later, Grapini said she disagreed with the statement and explained why she distributed the message:

Recognition

In 2019, Grapini was the recipient of the Internal Market & Consumer Protection Award at the annual

MEP Awards ''The Parliament Magazine'' is a monthly EU politics, policy and culture magazine. Its website, www.theparliamentmagazine.eu, is a forum for discussion on the latest developments in EU politics and policy, featuring regular contributions from pr ...

of ''The Parliament Magazine''.

References

External links

Official site
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grapini, Maria 1954 births Living people Members of the Chamber of Deputies (Romania) MEPs for Romania 2014–2019 MEPs for Romania 2019–2024 Romanian engineers Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iași alumni Members of the Romanian Cabinet Romanian women in business Women MEPs for Romania Women members of the Romanian Cabinet Social Democratic Party (Romania) politicians People from Berești 21st-century Romanian politicians 21st-century Romanian women politicians