Romania’s President Nicusor Dan, generally called a ‘centrist’ for want of a better adjective (though ‘weak’ would be more fitting), described Ilie Bolojan as “the person best fit to carry out the necessary reforms of the Romanian state apparatus” when he nominated him to head a government.
The challenges facing the former mayor of Oradea in June 2025 were huge: raising taxes including the sales tax, slashing the budget deficit of 9.3%, the highest in Europe, and axing thousands of jobs in the public sector, many of them politically sensitive.
That naturally made him unpopular with some voters, the dominant Social Democrat Party, the biggest partner in the governing coalition whose support in the rural heartlands was threatened, and extremist parties.
But it also earned Bolojan, the head of the National Liberal Party, an army of fans. At last, here was a Romanian politician focused on making the economy healthy, unafraid of being unpopular who tackled problems head on to improve Romania’s economy in a way that no other prime minister had done before him.
Strangely, however, there was one person who did not back the tough and clear-sighted prime minister: the Romanian president who had nominated him so enthusiastically a few months earlier.
So, the unfathomable Nicusor Dan, whose vulnerability lies in not having a party behind him, apparently began to plot his demise with the help of Bolojan’s detractors. Your enemy’s enemy is your friend as the saying goes.
Over the course of several weeks, the PSD, aided by the far-right AUR, party drew up a motion of no confidence to dismiss Bolojan’s government (the one the PSD was actually part of). Meanwhile, the Romanian president, known for not being hurried or rash, sat by and did nothing although this was a moment when his role as a mediator and guarantor of stability was required.
He failed to publicly support the prime minister he’d nominated to a thankless task, nor did he chastise the PSD-AUR tandem for hatching a plot that toppled Romania into a political crisis which saw the leu tumble and the cost of living and borrowing soar for the EU and NATO member.
He just let it happen.
And on the fateful May 5 day when Ilie Bolojan was ousted via a no-confidence vote, Nicusor Dan did not show even the most elementary political etiquette of thanking the prime minister for his thankless role.
In the post-1989 communist years, seven prime ministers have been dismissed by Parliament. They are Emil Boc, Mihai Răzvan Ungureanu, Sorin Grindeanu, Viorica Dăncilă, Ludovic Orban, Florin Cîțu and now Ilie Bolojan.
From memory, each one has been thanked by the head of state, however insincere the gesture was. Dan didn’t even grant Ilie Bolojan that fig leaf of good manners in an unsavory political world.
It’s not as if the Romanian president even had a plan up his sleeve. More than six weeks on, Romania still lacks a government, the leu is still down, the crisis rumbles one.
One nomination (Eugen Tomac, a European MEP) collapsed as he couldn’t muster the necessary votes. Then Nicusor Dan did something that betrayed his real weakness: his fear of Ilie Bolojan as a possible rival in the next presidential elections. He nominated an almost unheard of Liberal Party member to form a government, without informing the party or its leader, Ilie Bolojan, a basic courtesy. Cries of ‘treachery’ rang out around the country. .
Two days on, it’s unclear whether the latest nomination will secure the support he needs from Parliament. Romania’s political crisis now risks becoming a democratic crisis.
And Nicusor Dan still can’t even mention Ilie Bolojan’s name.
He couldn’t even thank him for taking on a job no other Romanian leader wanted.
