The new president of the Union of Writers: "We do not have a cultural strategy"

Writer and politician Varujan Vosganian was elected president of the Romanian Writers' Union. Vosganian states that the Romanian writer must return to the city and pleads for greater visibility of the union in the European cultural network: "The thoughts with which I begin my mandate were foreshadowed in the program that I presented at the beginning of my candidacy, which had as a central point the resettlement of the role of the writer in the Romanian society In the 90s, many writers got involved in the political and civic space, without succeeding in transforming the transition into an essentially cultural process. I think that the Romanian writer must return to the city, especially in troubled times like these." The new president of USR emphasized that it is necessary to adopt a cultural strategy of Romania: "We have an energy strategy, we have a defense strategy, an IT strategy, a transport strategy, but we do not have a cultural strategy, which I consider a priority in Today's Romania, where the controversies related to national identity and our place in Europe are so heated". Another point in the program of the new president of the Writers' Union refers to the need for young people's access to the organization: "I have proposed several ways, including procedural ones, to widen the access of young people, who must understand that the Writers' Union is not a Stalinist organization. It was created in 1908 and raised to the rank of public utility in 1912. All the great writers were part of it, and the most famous was probably Liviu Rebreanu in the interwar period. The Union of Writers is one of the most numerous and traditional organizations profile from the European continent and it must play an important role in the cultural network and very important in the way European literature interacts with the European Union, in the sense of drafting a legislation to protect intellectual property rights". Varujan Vosganian also announced that the Union has established a branch for honorary members of the Writers' Union, which will include "translators from other languages, editors or those who write about Romanian literature, promoters of Romanian literature abroad", which the Union wants " to keep them close and respect them for what they do for Romanian culture".

The writer Varujan Vosganian, a member of the Bucharest Poetry Branch, was elected by the General Assembly of the Writers' Union, with 660 votes out of 740 votes cast, as the president of the Union. The election of Vosganian comes after the vacancy of this position, after the death, on March 23, of the former president of the Writers' Union, the literary critic Nicolae Manolescu.