He was born in
Sighișoara to Ion and Viorica Mitrea and, after living in
Făgăraș and
Brașov, moved to
Bucharest, where he completed secondary studies at the city's
Dr. Petru Groza High School. In 1988, after his father’s death, his mother fled to
West Germany. His maternal grandfather, Miron Neagu, was a member of the
Romanian National Party; his maternal grandmother, Gabriela Waldhofer, was Austrian. His father was from
Leordeni,
Argeș County. Following
army service in
Medgidia, he studied transportation at the
Politehnica University of Bucharest, specialising in road vehicles and graduating in 1981. Following the
1989 Revolution, Mitrea became president of the trade union
Frăția, and after Frăția merged with another union in 1993, he continued until 1995 as head of the
National Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Romania – Brotherhood. In April 2008, the
National Anticorruption Directorate charged him with receiving bribes, instigating forgery in official documents, and using forgery as minister, and Mitrea resigned his Chamber seat that September after his colleagues (despite his request to the contrary) stopped the indictment (and a similar one for Năstase) from moving forward on grounds of
parliamentary immunity; he wished to fight the charges and clear his name. After serving as the coordinator of the PSD's successful
2008 election campaign, Mitrea won a seat in the Senate. At the
2012 election, he returned to the Chamber as one of its vice presidents and a member of its European affairs committee. In October 2014, Mitrea received a two-year prison sentence in a corruption case involving construction at his mother's house; in response, he vowed to appeal. His sentence was upheld the following February, when he was incarcerated at
Poarta Albă, at which point he resigned from the Chamber. Within his party, Mitrea has served as Vice President (1995-1996 and 2001-2005), Secretary General (1996-1997 and 2005-2006) and member of the General Executive Bureau (1997-2000). From 1996 to 2000, he was a vice president,
quaestor, and secretary of the Chamber of Deputies, also serving as a vice president from 2004 to 2008. Ideologically, Mitrea is an avowed
leftist but also an
anti-communist, and he has worked to distance the PSD from its image as a successor to the
Romanian Communist Party. == See also ==