President of Romania Klaus Iohannis | Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Romanian government cuts president’s budget by 20 percent Klaus Iohannis’ office argues the move is part of efforts to diminish his role.

The Romanian government has opened a new front in its ongoing battle with President Klaus Iohannis by cutting his office's budget by about 20 percent.

Led by Social Democrat Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, the government decided to cut the budget of the president's office by some €2.3 million as part of a revision of the 2018 budget, claiming that Iohannis' office isn't spending the money allocated to it. Other government entities, including the intelligence services and the energy and external affairs ministries, also saw budget cuts.

The president's spokeswoman Mădălina Dobrovolschi said the administration has committed to spending some 80 percent of its budget so far and it isn't true that it isn't spending its allocated funds.

"The budget correction has nothing to do with the need to consolidate the national budget, but it's a tool of budgetary punishment for political opponents and for institutions that are not subordinated to the [Social Democratic Party] PSD," Dobrovolschi said Tuesday.

She added that slashing the budget is just one of numerous attempts by the parliamentary majority, made up of the PSD and its liberal junior partner ALDE, to diminish the president's role through legislative changes.

Iohannis, a member of the National Liberal Party before becoming president, has constantly been at odds with the PSD-led government over the past year and a half. In April, he called on Dăncilă to resign because she didn’t consult him on the government’s plan to move the country’s embassy in Israel. In July, he was forced to dismiss the country’s leading anti-corruption figure, Laura Codruța Kövesi, after initially refusing to, in order to comply with a Constitutional Court ruling triggered by a legal complaint by the justice minister.

The budget cuts imposed by the government will have a negative impact on the president's capacity to represent Romania, Iohannis' spokeswoman said.

The president will have to cancel a summit of the Three Seas Initiative, a forum of Central and Eastern European countries located around the Baltic, Adriatic and Black Seas, she said. Iohannis was due to host the summit in Bucharest in mid-September, with 12 heads of state and government, as well as European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, expected to participate.

The budget cuts will also have an impact on activities under the Romanian presidency of the Council of the EU in the first part of next year, she said, without providing further details.

Finance Minister Eugen Teodorovici responded by arguing that the government has a budget allocated for the Three Seas Initiative summit and that enough money will be left for Iohannis to travel on official duty until the end of the year, according to Romanian news agency Mediafax.

"I'm sorry that there is such a situation and that they feel they have to come up with such statements. It's not the first time, won't be the last time," Teodorovici said, adding that the statement by the president's office about its budget allocation show its members don't have "good experience in this field."

The president's office responded by giving more details about how it spends its money and noting that it only pays for travel abroad after it signs contracts related to those trips, not before. The president's office will also not be able to pay for some contractual obligations it already has, it said.