{"id":430354,"date":"2025-06-20T12:23:04","date_gmt":"2025-06-20T10:23:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/06\/20\/romania-colloqui-governo-iva-deficit-pil\/"},"modified":"2025-06-20T13:37:02","modified_gmt":"2025-06-20T11:37:02","slug":"romania-yet-to-find-a-way-to-form-a-new-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/06\/20\/romania-yet-to-find-a-way-to-form-a-new-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Romania yet to find a way to form a new government"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels – The political crisis <\/strong>that has been gripping Romania <\/strong>for months continues to spiral. The future government partners cannot agree <\/strong>on the distribution of posts and, more importantly, how to reduce the country’s gigantic budget deficit<\/strong> while the deadline for presenting the recovery plan to Brussels is looming.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The black smoke came in yesterday evening\u00a0(June 19) when the umpteenth coalition negotiations<\/strong> between the four pro-European formations trying to give the Balkan country a government came to a standstill. The day was supposed to end with the announcement of a new prime minister<\/strong> to replace C\u0103t\u0103lin Predoiu<\/strong>, whose interim<\/i> mandate expires today.<\/p>\n

Bucharest
\nwas left without an executive<\/a> in early May after the candidate of the PSD-PNL-UDMR<\/strong> majority (Social Democrats, Liberals, and representatives of the Hungarian minority), Crin Antonescu<\/strong>, failed to secure\u00a0enough votes in the first round of the presidential elections<\/strong> to advance to the runoff, then won by the capital’s former mayor<\/a>, Nicu\u0219or Dan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Ilie<\/a>
PNL leader, Ilie Bolojan (photo: Consiglio europeo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Talks between the PSD, NLP, UDMR, and USR<\/strong> (the center-right party founded by Dan) stalled\u00a0on the thorny issue of the VAT increase<\/strong>. The leader of the NLP, Ilie Bolojan<\/strong>, would like to raise it from 19 percent to 21 percent.<\/strong>\u00a0He says it\u00a0is the only way to start shoring up\u00a0national public finances<\/strong>.\u00a0However,\u00a0Dan, who presides over forming the new executive as head of state, is against it.<\/strong> In addition to the USR, the UDMR is against the tax increase.<\/p>\n

Reducing the massive\u00a0state budget deficit is a real race against time<\/strong> for Bucharest. By June 30, the government (which\u00a0still does not exist) must present Brussels a credible deficit reduction plan to Brussels,<\/strong>\u00a0reducing\u00a0the deficit-to-GDP ratio<\/strong> from\u00a09.3 percent (the highest in the EU) to below the 3 percent threshold<\/strong>, as required by European constraints.<\/p>\n

The path to recovery can take place over a seven-year time horizon<\/strong>, but proposals on how to get there must be sent to the Commission by the end of the month, or the next NRRP installments risk being<\/strong> frozen<\/strong>\u00a0(and investor confidence risks declining\u00a0further). The main tools available are cutting public spending<\/strong>, favored by Dan, and increasing taxes<\/strong>, starting with VAT, as suggested by Bolojan (who would have found the backing of the SDP on this).<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"Nicusor<\/a>
Romanian president, Nicu\u0219or Dan (photo via Imagoeconomica)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In reality, what is in doubt is the\u00a0composition of the future governmental team<\/strong> (the press dubbed it the ‘Mauritius coalition’ because of the colors associated with its members). Theoretically, the agreement between the parties envisages a half-term changeover between Bolojan and a social democrat<\/strong> in the post of prime minister.<\/p>\n

However, the president of the UDMR, Kelemen Hunor<\/strong>, is becoming increasingly impatient with the ongoing tug-of-war and, according to the local press, has gone so far as to threaten to withdraw his party from the negotiations<\/strong>. The Hungarian minority party would like to maintain control of the Ministry of Finance<\/strong>, while the coalition agreement would entrust it with the Ministry of Development and Culture. The potential partners\u00a0also disagree on\u00a0distributing other top roles<\/strong>, including those of the intelligence services and two judges at the Constitutional Court.<\/p>\n

Numbers in hand, the UDMR\u00a0is not strictly necessary<\/strong> to keep the executive on its feet: even if the latter were composed only of the PSD, PNL, and USR, it would hold 175 seats out of the total 331 seats<\/strong> in the Chamber of Deputies (the lower branch of the Romanian legislature), where the majority threshold is 166.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday evening’s talks between the partners of the future pro-European coalition ended with yet another stalemate, as the end-of-month deadline to present the recovery plan to scale down Bucharest’s massive deficit to the EU approaches<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":430345,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[28801,31552,31284,31551],"class_list":["post-430354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-crisi-di-governo-en","tag-ilie-bolojan-en","tag-romania-en","tag-increase-iva-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430354"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":430381,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430354\/revisions\/430381"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}