Ştirbu was a priest before entering politics in 2001. In 2007 and 2008 he was a State Secretary in the Ministry of Culture. Later he was the president of the Commission for Culture, Arts and Mass-Media in the Chamber of Deputies.

When asked whether he thinks he can handle the job despite being relatively unknown in the Cultural field, he replied that a person doesn’t need two Nobel prizes in order to manage the Ministry of Culture.

In the political and social turmoil of the end of 2013, the Ministry of Culture was in the spotlight when Barbu said at a public event that the budget for HIV/AIDS programme is half of the budget for the Ministry of Culture, which is far too much for a country that is not South Africa. A few day later, Barbu expressed his regrets and resigned.