Dan Nica

Dan Nica (born July 2, 1960) is a Romanian engineer and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), he has been a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Galaţi County since 1996. In the Adrian Năstase cabinet, he was Minister of Communications and Information Technology from 2000 to July 2004. In the Emil Boc cabinet, he was the Vice Prime Minister and Minister of Administration and Interior between February and October 2009. In the Victor Ponta cabinet, he served as Communications Minister for a second time, from May 2012 to February 2014.

He was born in Panciu, Vrancea County and in 1985 graduated from the Electronics and Telecommunications Faculty of the Gheorghe Asachi Technical University of Iaşi. He also holds a 2005 doctorate in Communication Sciences, has co-designed three patented inventions, and authored the 2001 book Guvern, cetăţean, societatea informaţională ("Government, Citizen, IT Society"). From 1985 to 1996, he worked at the Galaţi County Telecommunications Directorate, and was its director from 1991 onward. In this capacity he coordinated a telephone-extension project, which resulted in the county becoming one of the first in Romania in which over 90% of households had a telephone. Concurrently, from 1993 to 1996, he was an associate professor at the University of Galaţi, teaching Telecommunications and Data Transmission.

In 1996, Nica was elected to the Chamber for the PDSR (PSD from 2001); he sat on the industry and services committee. From 1997 to 2003, he headed the Galaţi municipal party organisation, while from 1999 to 2003, he was first vice president of the PSD Galaţi County chapter, and from 1999 to 2004, he sat on the party's central executive bureau. He was re-elected in 2000, and was also part of the Năstase cabinet until July 2004, when he was dismissed during a reshuffle. During this period he belonged to the Chamber's public administration, land management and ecological equilibrium committee and introduced a law for supporting and promoting small and medium-sized businesses. Also, from 2002 to 2004, he was a member of the United Nations Information and Communication Technologies Task Force. He was elected again in 2004, following which he became vice president of the information technology and communications committee. During the 2004 campaign, the Coalition for a Clean Parliament, an NGO, accused him of lacking the moral integrity needed to sit in Parliament, claiming he had taken decisions as minister that benefited certain private companies at the expense of the state and of market competition. Cited were an order regulating taxes on mobile telephone carriers that allegedly saved one company around €10 million a year, and the charge that Nica dropped a clause in the Romtelecom privatisation contract in 2003. He sued for 1.5 billion lei (some $50,000) in damages, but lost.

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