From October to December 2009, he was also acting Minister of Agriculture after a political crisis that led to the Social Democratic Party’s withdrawal from government.
After completing secondary studies there in 1972 at Vasile Roaită Theoretical High School (now Mircea cel Bătrân),[1] he enrolled at the Polytehnic Institute of Bucharest.
[2] During the 1980s, he set up an amateur scale modeling circle for students, which was attended by future literary critic Angelo Mitchievici.
According to Mitchievici's memoir of life under the communist regime, these circumstances allowed Berceanu to attend workshops in various Eastern Bloc countries, "and he probably thus had the opportunity to engage in some bişniţă [roughly, grey market transactions].
[7] At the November 2008 parliamentary election, Berceanu regained his Senate seat[8] and was named transport minister the following month.
[10][11] After re-assuming ministerial office in 2008, Berceanu announced motorway construction as his priority (despite serious budget cuts brought about by the financial crisis), although acknowledging the poor state of national roads and the state railway Căile Ferate Române (CFR), as well as the need to focus on airports (such as the Braşov Airport currently under construction).
[22] Orban fired back, labelling the 2009 transport budget a "cruel mockery" from an infrastructure development standpoint, accusing Berceanu of blocking the Calafat-Vidin project and of "not lifting a finger" on the Craiova-Piteşti express road, and stating his "personal feeling" that Berceanu's days as minister were numbered.
[26] In 2006, he made public his 300-page Securitate file, revealing that the communist secret police agency had harassed and threatened him and his wife in the autumn of 1989 for allegedly intending to flee the country using a hang glider he had built.
[27][28] In 2000, French President Jacques Chirac conferred the rank of Chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite upon Berceanu.