“Romania urgently needs a reset,” said Sorin Grindeanu, the leader of the PSD, campaigning to destroy the coalition government he’s part of and thus destabilize the country’s political, economic and social destabilization.
Grindeanu, the arsonist is insensible to internal Romanian politics between the autumn of 2024 and the spring of 2025 (the artificial rise of a Russian asset in the presidential elections, the cancelled elections, the systemic crisis of the country’s finances). Nothing that has happened internationally in four years, including the last few weeks (two major wars, one on our border, the other in the Middle East and the pressure they exert on the world economy, as well as Donald Trump’s weakening of NATO).
Sorin Grindeanu’s need to destroy the government seems all the more curious, considering the following:
- His declared need for a reset comes at a time when Bucharest finally has a prime minister who is willing to carry out reforms that can shake up some of the most inefficient areas of the state. The fact that Ilie Bolojan tackles them head on is highlighted by the PSD’s sharp opposition and by the fact that even a solid faction of Bolojan’s own party (the PSD wing of the PNL) finds itself rattled by Bolojan.
- Grindeanu’s ‘need for a reset’ never happened in other critical situations in the last decade, although there were plenty of occasions. For example, in 2014, before AUR emerged, the PSD showed shades of nationalism, echoing Corneliu Vadim Tudor a a few years earlier (remember “Proud to be Romanians” – details HERE). Another example was when the PSD-Dragnea era (with Grindeanu in the foreground) took a wrecking ball to the rule of law, trying to ‘Orbanize” the justice system and laws and change Romania’s strategic orientation. What about when friend and party leader, Marcel Ciolacu, drove the country into debt and raised its budget deficit to almost 10% – a performance that stunned Europe, and called for austerity measures which the government had to take on. Under Ciolacu’s leadership, also a candidate in the 2024 presidential elections, the PSD ended up cutting its nose to spite its face by unwittingly directing votes to counter-candidate George Simion. The problem was not an own goal but that the PSD disrupted the democratic process and in doing so discredited Romania just as Moscow registered a master stroke by penetrating the Romanian elections, through candidate Călin Georgescu. Finally from the summer of 2025 to the spring of 2026, the top court tried to block the reform of magistrates’ special pensions. At that time, Sorin Grindeanu was hurt by the reset of Romania, singing for the camarilla, a camarilla that was deeply unpopular with ordinary Romanians. The justice camarilla puts its hands in both pockets of the Romanians – the national budget, one, and the hundreds of millions from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).
Sorin Grindeanu’s dream now, to “reset Romania” comes from the well-known and increasingly worn wardrobe of the PSD: when the PSD goes through an internal crisis, the PSD reflex is to create a national crisis, while pretending to shed tears of pity for the Romanian people.
All the PSD leaders did this, not just Grindeanu (the most famous of them, Ion Iliescu, even generated street fights, bringing coal miners to the Capital – where Romanians were injured and killed by other Romanians).
So it is in the spring of 2026: as Bolojan advances reforms that don’t fit with the PSD’s vision of the world, the party applies the tried and tested textbook method – blackmailing partners, criticizing the prime minister, reversing reforms, stopping new ones.
Everything, of course, publicly packaged under the silky bow of “Romania’s reset”.
In reality, demolition is more accurate than reset.
Because, in reality, like his predecessors, Sorin Grindeanu is caught in the vice of cohabitation with a non-transparent fauna of interest groups that have been gravitating around the party he formally leads for decades (in a situation where interest groups are the archers, and the PSD leaders, the arrows).
As the dominant party in the ruling coalition, the PSD has the obvious advantage of being indispensable for maintaining the parliamentary majority for the current government. This is why he blackmails both the prime minister and the president. The calculation is simple: either with us, the extremists, or a minority government.
But from a more nuanced perspective, those who are being blackmailed have a lever, which has never been tested to its full potential). If they publicly expose the perversity of the game the PSD plays and make public opinion an informal coalition partner they can force the PSD leader to go the whole hog.
In reality, Grindeanu et al are not just trying to get rid of Bolojan, but of the Bolojan reform spirit. President Nicușor Dan should take this into account and act accordingly.
Romania, in the current internal and external context, simply cannot afford to deciate from reforms.
And Bucharest has no arguments left to give the public and its strategic partners in the EU: moving to get rid of the prime minister and his reformist spirit he has imprinted on the delicate act of governing.
