This year, Romania missed the opportunity to recalibrate its transatlantic relationship in the context of Donald Trump's return to the White House. The transition from the comfortable status of a security beneficiary to that of a responsible regional provider caught us unprepared. While our neighbours on the northern half of the eastern flank were consolidating their diplomatic positions in Washington and investing in their own defence, Romania, paralysed by internal political crises and unable to articulate a coherent narrative about what happened in the context of the cancelled presidential elections, unwittingly became the case study through which the Trump administration illustrates the new transatlantic paradigm, with its central idea: the US will offer fewer free security guarantees to those who do not prove they deserve them. Three major diplomatic failures in 2025 have made Romania the subject of international newspapers: discrediting on the Munich stage, suspension from the Visa Waiver programme, and the withdrawal of American troops. These are not mere hiccups, but the direct consequences of the actions of a political class irresponsibly anchored in nostalgia for a romantic era of the strategic partnership that has come to a definitive end. 

About the author:

Antonia-Laura Pup is a Fulbright student at Georgetown University in Washington DC, where she works as a teaching assistant. She completed a master's degree in international security at Sciences Po Paris, as a scholarship holder of the Romanian Government and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Previously, she was a parliamentary advisor to the chair of the Defence Committee in the Chamber of Deputies. She is also a Research Fellow at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation and a Congressional Fellow at the Special Committee on Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in the House of Representatives, United States.

Romania's 15 minutes of fame: how we landed at the forefront of the change in US strategy towards Europe

2025 was a particularly turbulent year for labor relations in Romania, regardless of the perspective from which we view them. First, there was a major change in the labor market to the detriment of workers, caused by a combination of the economic slowdown and the austerity measures imposed by the government. Secondly, wage growth has slowed significantly, despite high inflation and the transposition of the European directive on adequate minimum wages. Thirdly, collective bargaining and social dialogue have entered a period of uncertainty, given, among other things, the government's explicitly hostile stance. The most reasonable assumption is that, as these trends intensify, 2026 will be a considerably worse year, with little cause for optimism even in the medium term.

About the author:

Stefan Guga is director at Syndex Romania, a labor expert, and a doctor of sociology and social anthropology at the Central European University (CEU).

Developments and prospects in labor relations 2025-2026

The main trends in Romanian society in 2025 converge towards the conclusion that this is the first year of a short transition period at the end of a four-decade historical cycle. The historical period following the December 1989 Revolution was characterized by the dominance of a single political actor (the Social Democratic Party – PSD), with its various institutional and ideological metamorphoses, which ensured the stability of the political regime and Euro-Atlantic consensus. This historical cycle is very likely to end with the elections between 2028 and 2030.

About the author:

Dr. Florin Abraham is a historian and professor of political science at SNSPA. His academic interests include 20th-century history, political systems, and democratization processes. He has published several books in Romania and abroad, as well as dozens of scientific articles.

The twilight of the post-December historical cycle

Austerity measures introduced by the "train ordinance" O.U.G. 156/30.12.2024, reiterated and extended by the government through Law 141/25.07.2025, undermined the emerging trend of improvement in the economic situation of families with children, visible in the statistics for the period 2020-2024. The freezing of the minimum wage and social benefits has widened the gap between family budgets and the minimum cost of living. The incremental increases in child allowances and social assistance over the last four years risk being completely eroded by inflation and new obligations regarding contributions to the public health insurance system. If the suspension of indexation provided for in social policy legislation can be cynically considered a "temporary" measure (ignoring the needs of beneficiaries), the abolition of co-insurance status and the exemption of vulnerable groups from paying health insurance contributions represents a historic turning point in relation to the established insurance system model, inspired by conservative-corporatist European models. This measure will particularly affect agricultural workers' families and the unemployed, who lack the financial resources to pay the contribution and will lose subsidized access to medical services, except for medical emergencies and national health programs.

About the author:

Cristina Raţ is a lecturer at the Department of Sociology at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca, where she teaches courses on class inequality and social policy.

Social protection for low-income families in 2025. The impact of austerity measures

For education in Romania, 2025 was a year of brutal change, in which promises of reform were realized through a package of harsh austerity measures adopted to reduce the budget deficit.

Under the pretext of fiscal responsibility, the state cut scholarships for hundreds of thousands of students, merged over 500 schools, increased class sizes, increased teachers' working hours, and restricted free transportation.

About the author:

Cristian Ghingheș is a program director at the Romanian Academic Society (SAR), coordinating projects in the fields of public policy, governance, and transparency. He is also a member of the Quartet Institute, where he contributes to research on urban mobility and environmental policies. A graduate and postgraduate student in Public Administration, he has worked in both research and advocacy, as well as in local public administration, where he was deputy mayor of Bacău.

2025, a year of austerity in Romanian education. How inequalities are amplified by repeating old mistakes

Over the past thirty years, the "Snagov consensus" has provided Romania with three pillars of a relatively clear "grand strategy": the highest possible degree of integration into the European Union, the consolidation of the strategic partnership with the United States, along with NATO membership and local participation in defense and deterrence within the alliance. The differences between the parties that have come and gone in the legislature and government over the years have been essentially one of style and intensity, not of orientation or priorities. AUR is the first major party to explicitly challenge this orientation and some of the traditional priorities associated with it.

If AUR comes to power, Romania will probably have a foreign policy closer to the Orbán model, promoting a multi-vector strategy, more restrained towards the Russian Federation than that promoted by Hungary, but also more irredentist towards the Republic of Moldova and in opposition to the European Union's integration projects. 

About the author:

Marius Ghincea is a political scientist and researcher at ETH Zurich, co-founder of the Quartet Institute, a think tank in Bucharest, and Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.

Meloni or Orbán? What would the foreign policy of an AUR government look like?

The article presents a retrospective of the main events in the fields of energy, climate, and the environment in 2025, highlighting the discrepancies between Romania's commitments and their actual implementation. It discusses the presidential campaign programs on these topics, the extreme weather events that marked 2025, the policies for decarbonization and restructuring of the coal industry, the controversies surrounding the expansion of natural gas exploitation, and the opportunity to adopt the legislative framework for creating energy communities.

About the author:

Eliza Barnea is a development expert focusing on just transition, climate action, and social inclusion. She is currently the coordinator of the just transition campaign at Bankwatch Romania, where she works with local partners, national authorities, and European institutions to advance a fair energy transition. She has previously worked for the World Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She holds a Master's degree in Cultural Anthropology and International Development Studies from KU Leuven, Belgium. 

From vulnerability to resilience: a perspective on climate, environment, and energy events in Romania in 2025

More than a year after the Constitutional Court's decision to reject Diana Șoșoacă's candidacy and to cancel the first round of the presidential elections won by Călin Georgescu, amid fears about the Kremlin's influence and their far-right orientation, the issue of extremism has become central in the public sphere. The end of 2024 and the months that followed were marked by journalistic investigations and an institutional mobilization unprecedented in the last 30 years, resulting in inquiries, indictments, and convictions. However, despite these reactions and increased awareness of the risks, towards the end of the year there was a return to passivity and even a tendency to normalize the far right among some public institutions and democratic political elites.

About the author:

Adina Marincea is a researcher at the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania, where she analyzes far-right discourse and manifestations in Romania. She holds a PhD in Communication and Public Relations and a postdoctorate on the populist discourse of the radical right in Romania. 

The far right in 2025: between combating and normalizing