Frugal Romanian PM Bolojan Ousted – What’s Next?

The no-confidence motion filed jointly by Romania’s ruling PSD and the far-right opposition AUR party toppled Prime Minister (PM) Ilie Bolojan in a landslide. As President Nicușor Dan scrambles to mediate the crisis and rule out early elections that could hand anti-European forces an outright majority, Romania enters a period of institutional limbo.

None of this was unforeseeable. Less than a year ago, Oana Popescu-Zamfir had already sketched the fragility of the Romanian government’s ruling coalition for Visegrad Insight, describing it as ‘built not on genuinely shared principles but on circumstantial necessity’, held together mainly by ‘their shared fear of early elections and internal dissolution’. Former PM Florin Cîțu struck a similar note in Visegrad Insight’s State of Romania discussion ahead of last year’s presidential vote, warning that the fiscal correction Romania needed would certainly trigger political turbulence – and any government attempting serious austerity would pay a steep price.

Those fears have now materialised, and the central question hanging over Bucharest now is whether Dan can still deliver on the promise he made just after the confidence vote – that Romania would ‘have a pro-Western government once again’ once a new majority is negotiated.

Litmus-test coalition

The four-party coalition that brought Bolojan to power in June 2025, formed by President Dan, consisted of the left-wing Partidul Social Democrat (Social Democratic Party, PSD), Bolojan’s centre-right Partidul Național Liberal (National Liberal Party, PNL), the reformist Uniunea Salvați România (Save Romania Union, USR) and the ethnic Hungarian Uniunea Democrată Maghiară din România (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania, UDMR). It came in the aftermath of the annulled November 2024 presidential election – cancelled by the Constitutional Court over suspected Russian interference benefiting AUR’s George Simion – and a rerun in the summer of 2025 won by the independent Dan with 53.6 per cent of the vote.