In an email to Exit, the Alexandru Ioan Cuza University in Iaşi, Romania, has confirmed that it is officially investigating the plagiarism of Socialist MP Taulant Balla in his PhD Thesis.
Balla copied extensive sections of the study Policy-Making in the EU: Achievements, Challenges, and Proposals for Reform by Andrea Renda for the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels into his own 2015 dissertation The Reform of Decision-Making System in the European Union, for which he received summa cum laude.
Balla is one of several government officials who have been found to plagiarize their way to an academic title. This has not prevented Prime Minister Rama from recycling several of them into other offices.
In her email, Lidia Bourceanu of the Educational Marketing Department of Alexandru Ioan Cuza University declared:
“As our higher education institution strongly supports all procedures and policies meant to discourage all forms of intellectual theft, under any circumstances, we find the issue brought to our attention most concerning. Your message has been given a registration number (UAIC 1947/04.02.2019) and will be forwarded to the Ethics Committee, in order to be analysed with the utmost rigour and professionalism.”
