FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN ROMANIA specifying the exact method) the members of the organisations (at local and county levels). For county councils, parliamentary and European elections and the position of President of Romania, the final decision lies with the National Council(art. 66). The Regulation on Local Elections art. 8(2) stipulates:»a 20% bonus is granted for female candidates, persons under the age of 30, persons of a different ethnicity than Romanian and persons with physical or sensory disabilities«. Analysis of the formal criteria for establishing electoral lists shows that the most transparent and institutionalised provisions are to be found in the case of PLUS. Also, PLUS is the only party that lays down in its statutes the criterion of representation of both genders in the selection of candidates, and in the specific rules it grants bonus points(albeit reduced) having the effect of supporting women's candidacies. This combines with the fact that it is a new party, which means that the rule regarding reproduction of mandates does not apply, so PLUS should have had balanced electoral lists in terms of the presence of women and men. The USR has much less in the way of explicit criteria, without any provision relating to gender equality, and the principle of internal elections is not necessarily favourable to women, given that parties and the political game are dominated by men(it is worth recalling that, among the nine vice­presidents of the party, only one is a woman). The other four political parties/formations are more in line with the system of patronage, judging from the decision-making roles assigned to organisations at each level, but centralising power at the level of national bodies, especially in the case of parliamentary and Euro­parliamentary elections. There are no specific criteria regarding the selection, only in the case of the UDMR is it suggested for certain positions that conditions enhancing electoral attractiveness be created. All four parties have women's organisations, but the PNL is the only party that does not grant any right of representation in the internal leadership structures to women or women's organisation. The PSD is the only party that, in addition to granting the right to represent the women's organisation on governing bodies(a principle that also applies with the UDMR and AUR), sets internal quotas of 30% for all leadership structures. UDMR lays down quotas of 15% only for delegates to the Assembly of Delegates. The PNL has the least favourable status and procedures for women, according to the research presented above. As we have shown in Table 1, representation of women in the Romanian Parliament increased slightly from 1990 to 2016 but registered a decline in 2020. A similar decrease was registered in 1992 and 2008, but Romania's political year 2020 cannot be compared with that of 1992, and in 2008 the decrease can be attributed to the changeover in the electoral system. Although the presence of women in the Parliament had barely reached 20%, a percentage that underscored male domination of the political sphere, Romania's entry into the EU seemed to have favoured the onset of an upward trend. Therefore, we view the decrease observed in 2020 to constitute a new phenomenon in Romanian politics, and one which begs explanation. In this context, a number of points need to be clarified. The first observation is that, in terms of representation in the Romanian Parliament, we are witnessing two simultaneous phenomena. On the one hand, there is a tendency toward harmonisation concerning the representation of women in the two chambers of Parliament. The first Senate in post-communist Romania had 119 members, of which only one was a woman – Lia Manoliu. The situation was not much better in 1992(with only three female senators) or in 1996(only two female senators). After having an almost exclusively male Senate, in 2020 a Senate came about in which the proportion of women was similar to that of the Chamber of Deputies(18.4% in the Senate and 18.5% in the Chamber of Deputies). On the other hand, however, representation in the Chamber of Deputies decreased significantly, from 20.7% in 2016 to 18.5% in 2020, a decrease of more than 10%. A second observation was already touched on at the beginning of this study: in elections to the European Parliament, the percentage of women plummeted from 34% in 2014 to 21% in 2019. And this decrease took place even though all parties represented in the European Parliament are directly aware of how important this is at European level. However, a third observation also warrants mention: the decline observed in parliamentary and European elections has not been observed in local elections, where the percentage of female mayors increased from 4.6% in 2016 to 5.4% in 2020. However, data for the local elections provide more information, because we are talking not only about elections to the mayor's office, but also about elections to local councils and county councils, which generate a very large number of candidates: in 2020 local elections, the lists of candidates included 13,797 candidates for mayoral positions, 14,064 candidates for county councillor positions, and 227,786 candidates for local councillor positions. Based on the lists of candidates, we can analyse the gender distribution of candidates for the three local electoral races(see Figure 3). Between 2016 and 2020, we can see a slight increase in the presence of women on the lists of candidates for all three races: mayor's office(from 8.4% to almost 10%), local council (from 22.1% to 23.4%) and county council(from 22% to 23.9%). This distribution should seem familiar, as we see it in multiple contexts: women are accepted in greater proportions in low and medium-level positions, but as we approach the top of the hierarchical pyramid, the prevalence of women decreases. Just as the proportion of women is higher among secretaries of state than among ministers, just as the proportion of women is higher among lecturers and assistant professors than among full professors, just as the proportion of women in private companies is higher in middle management than on boards of directors, women are also more likely to serve on local councils than hold the position of mayor. We may also add that a political function at the local level seems more compatible with the need to reconcile personal life and a political career, so the» choice« of women to get involved in local politics is less in conflict with stereotypes about traditional gender roles(this being considered important or mandatory only for women). Unfortunately, presence on a list of candidates is not the same as holding the position for which elections are organised. And we can verify this by analysing the results of mayoral elections, 12