Who is Klaus Iohannis? President profile

Klaus Iohannis, the winner of Romania’s presidential elections, has been serving as mayor of Sibiu, one of the largest cities in Romania, since 2000.

He is credited with turning his city into one of Romania’s most popular tourist destinations. He also contributed do having Sibiu named European Capital of Culture in 2007.

Iohannis, 55, was born in a family of Transylvanian Saxons. His parents emigrated to Germany in 1992 and got German citizenship.

Klaus Iohannis, however, stayed in Romania. He graduated the Faculty of Physics of the Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and then worked as a physics teacher until 1997. From 1997 to 2000, he served as deputy general school inspector and then general inspector of the Sibiu county, coordinating the public schools in the county.

In 2000, he was first elected mayor of Sibiu, representing the Democratic Forum of Germans in Romania. He got re-elected by a wide margin in 2004, 2008 and 2012.

In October 2009, a grand coalition made of the National Liberal Party (PNL), the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Hungarian Democratic Union (UDMR), who were at that time in opposition, proposed to President Traian Basescu to name Iohannis Prime Minister, but Basescu refused.

Read the entire article on Romania-Insider.com