Horia-Roman Patapievici

[3] Patapievici was also a TV producer for two shows for TVR Cultural: "Idei în libertate" (2002) and "Înapoi la argument" (2005).

In 2004, Patapievici started working as the director of a cultural journal, Idei în dialog (Ideas in dialogue), published by the Academia Caţavencu Trust.

[7] Following the demand of the National Peasants' Party, the issue of Patapievici's candidacy was reopened in late January 2000,[8] the Parliamentary committee approving his candidacy, despite a dissent of the Greater Romania Party representative, Dumitru Bălăeț, who accused Patapievici of lack of patriotism based on some of his previous writings in his book "Politics".

Daniela Buruiană claimed that Patapievici, Dinescu, and Pleșu help foreign secret services which want to discredit the Romanian state institutions,[12] prompting them to announce that they'll sue her.

[18] There were a few attempts of ousting the Patapievici, Pleșu, and Dinescu trio, especially from the Social-Democrats and the Greater Romania Party,[19] but eventually they gave in to public pressure and canceled them.

Before the 2004 Romanian presidential election, the council decided that Corneliu Vadim Tudor was not a Securitate informer, with a minority dissenting view (Patapievici, Pleșu, Dinescu, and Secasiu).

[20] In January 2005, Traian Băsescu, the then newly elected President of Romania, named Patapievici as the new head of the Romanian Cultural Institute (ICR), replacing a 15-year rule of Augustin Buzura.

On the day of the election, Catalan newspaper La Vanguardia published an interview in which Patapievici was asked about a video recording that had been repeatedly broadcast in Romanian media and which allegedly depicted Băsescu hitting a 10-year-old boy.

To support his denial, he cited an e-mail sent in English by the Spanish interviewer, Félix Flores: "Mr. Patapievici did not mentioned [sic] the existence of any tape about Mr. Geoană: he just said that Mr. Băsescu was offered such a thing and he rejected it.