President Dan summons parties for new prime minister talks amid five-month crisis

President Nicușor Dan reconvened parties and parliamentary groups on Monday for fresh consultations on a prime-ministerial candidate, with meetings running from 14:00 to 19:00. The first briefing will be with the Social Democratic Party, then AUR, the National Liberal Party, USR, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians, the national minorities group and other minor parties. This follows the parliament’s recent refusal to endorse Siegfried Mureșan, Dan’s earlier nominee, whose confidence vote fell short.

Romania has been governed by an interim cabinet for five months after the Ilie Bolojan government was dismissed by a censure motion in early May, which broke a coalition that originally included PSD, PNL, USR, UDMR and the minorities group. The constitution requires the president to propose a candidate after consulting the party with an absolute majority or, lacking that, all represented parties, and the nominee then has ten days to seek a confidence vote. The ongoing stalemate underscores the difficulty of forming a stable majority in the fragmented parliament.