Published July 7, 2026
Romania is now into its third month under a caretaker government with no end in sight. The original four-party coalition, formed after last year’s presidential election, was a shotgun marriage of odd bedfellows from the start. Embracing all four non-populist parties in parliament, there were never any common governing themes to hold them together. Their inability to stay together, spurred by the Social Democrats’ (PSD) desire to spend more money than their coalition agreement allowed, should have surprised no one.
Indeed, the government’s collapse should have been foreseen from the outset since they had spent more than a decade fighting one another for power. That prospect did not deter President Nicușor Dan, though. He saw his mandate as one primarily geared towards keeping the “anti-European” populist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and two smaller parties to its right from any participation in government.
That plan might have worked had that been the only item on the agenda. But governing requires, well, governing, and Romania’s huge annual deficit meant the government had to make tough, unpopular choices to reduce it. Doing so was a precondition for unlocking billions of euros in EU funds, while also increasing the chance that Romania could join its neighbour, Bulgaria, in the eurozone.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, is a globally recognized expert on American elections and policy as well as global populism.
