Orban's government

Romania's centre-right President, Klaus Iohannis, on Wednesday nominated acting Finance Minister Florin Citu as the new prime minister-designate - a pick that parliament appeared likely to reject.

The doomed-looking move was widely seen as a way for the head of state to trigger snap parliamentary elections. 

This is the latest in a series of articles about the demographic crisis facing Central and Southeast Europe.

Russian energy giant Lukoil is in talks with ExxonMobil about the planned sale of the US multinational's 50 per cent stake of Neptun Deep gas project in the Romanian zone of the Black Sea, Romanian Prime Minister Ludovic Orban revealed late on Monday.

National Liberal Party leader Ludovic Orban was voted in as the new Prime Minister of Romania on Monday, in a parliamentary plenary session that Social Democratic MPs boycotted. 

A conservative theologist, Semjen is leader of the Christian Democratic People's Party, the pseudo-coalition partner of Prime Minister Viktor Orban's governing Fidesz party. In his doctoral thesis, he famously called Rolling Stones singer Mick Jagger "the devil".

The academics, however, say it is simply the latest move in a Fidesz strategy to rein in Hungary's intellectuals and stifle free, particularly critical, thought.

The battle over the academy began a year ago, and is nearing its denouement.

The decision to take them down was a rare reversal by a nationalist-populist leader whose party is on track to win more than half of the vote on May 26, giving Fidesz 14 or 15 of the country's 21 seats in the European parliament, versus 12 now, according to the latest polls.

The European Parliament's vote to censure Hungary presents the assembly's dominant centre-right bloc with a dilemma over whether to retain its populist Hungarian allies or expel them months before elections.

The European Commission, the European Union's legal institution, on Thursday sent a formal letter of notice to Hungary, the first step of an infringement procedure, over the government's "Stop Soros" law.

BUDAPEST, Hungary (Reuters) - Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a third straight term in power in Sunday elections after his anti-immigration campaign message secured a strong majority for his party in parliament, granting him two-thirds of seats based on preliminary results.