History of Romania (1989–present)

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After the Communist rulership ended and the former Communist dictator

Political reforms have been based on a new democratic constitution adopted in 1991. The FSN split that year, beginning a period of coalition governments that lasted until 2000, when Iliescu's Social Democratic Party (then the Party of Social Democracy in Romania, PDSR, now PSD), returned to power and Iliescu again became President, with Adrian Năstase as Prime Minister. This government fell in the 2004 elections amid allegations of corruption, and was succeeded by further unstable coalitions which have been subject to similar allegations.

During the recent period, Romania has become more closely integrated with the West, becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004^[1] and of the European Union (EU) in 2007.^[2]

1989 marked the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. A mid-December protest in Timișoara against the eviction of a Hungarian minister (László Tőkés) grew into a country-wide protest against the Ceaușescu régime, sweeping the dictator from power.

On 21 December, President

In the aftermath of the revolution, several parties which claimed to be successors of pre-World War II parties were formed. The most successful were the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚ-CD), the National Liberal Party (PNL), and the Romanian Social Democrat Party (PSDR). Their leadership was made of former political prisoners of the 1950s, repatriated émigrés, and people which had not been affiliated with the Romanian Communist Party (PCR). As a reaction, the FSN declared it would participate in the elections as a political party. The announcement triggered a series of anti-government demonstrations in Bucharest. The already tense situation was aggravated by press campaigns. The newspapers, assuming either a strong pro-government or strong pro-opposition stance, issued attacks and tried to discredit the opposing side. The FSN, having a better organisational structure, and controlling the state administration, used the press still controlled by the state in its own advantage. FSN also organised counter-manifestations, gathering the support of the blue-collar workers in the numerous factories of Bucharest. As the anti-government protesters started to charge the Palace of the Parliament, more groups of workers from around the country poured into Bucharest to protect the fragile government. The most notable among these groups where the coal miners of the Jiu Valley, known in Romania for their 1977 strike against the Ceaușescu regime. The workers attacked the offices of opposition parties, however the government intervened and succeeded in re-establishing the order. These events were to be known as the January 1990 Mineriad, the first of the Mineriads.

On 28 February, less than a month later, another anti-government demonstration in Bucharest ended again with a confrontation between demonstrators and coal miners. This time, despite the demonstrators' pleas for non-violence, several people started throwing stones at the Government building. Riot police and army forces intervened to restore order, and on the same night, 4,000 miners rushed into Bucharest. This incident is known as the Mineriad of February 1990.

Presidential and parliamentary elections were held on 20 May 1990. Iliescu won with almost 90% of the popular vote and thus became the first elected

During the spring 1990 electoral campaign, the opposition parties organised a massive sit-in protest in down-town Bucharest, later known as the Golaniad. After the FSN won an overwhelming majority, most of the Bucharest protesters dispersed, however less than a hundred chose to remain in the square. The police efforts to evict them and re-establish traffic in central Bucharest two weeks after the elections was met with violence, and several state institutions were attacked (among them the Bucharest Police and the Interior Ministry). The freshly elected president, Ion Iliescu, issued a call to Romania's population to come and defend the government from further attacks. The main group to answer the call were the coal miners of Jiu Valley, leading to the June 1990 Mineriad. The miners and other groups physically confronted the demonstrators and forcibly cleared University Square. After the situation calmed down, president Iliescu publicly thanked the miners for their help in restoring order in Bucharest, and requested their return to the Jiu Valley. The general national and international media portrayal of the miners involvement in these events have been disputed by the miners, who claimed that most of the violence was perpetrated by government agents that were agitating the crowds; these claims, and a growing public suspicion of the sequence and orchestration of events, led to Parliamentary and other inquiries.^[3][4] Parliamentary inquiries showed that members of the government intelligence services were involved in the instigation and manipulation of both the protesters and the miners,^[4] and later, in June 1994, a Bucharest court found two former Securitate officers guilty of ransacking and stealing $100,000 from the house of a leading opposition politician.^[3]

In December 1991, a new constitution was drafted and subsequently adopted, after a popular referendum. March 1992 marked the split of the FSN into two groups: the

Data from[5] unless otherwise specified.

Emil Constantinescu of the Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) won the second round of the 1996 Romanian presidential elections by a comfortable margin of 9% and thus replaced Iliescu as chief of state.

PDSR won the largest number of seats in Parliament, but was unable to form a viable coalition. Constituent parties of the CDR joined the Democratic Party (PD) and the

Presidential and parliamentary elections took place again on 28 November 2004. No political party was able to secure a viable parliamentary majority. There was no winner in the first round of the presidential elections. Finally, the joint PNL-PD candidate, Traian Băsescu, won the second round on 12 December 2004 with 51% of the vote and thus became the third post-revolutionary president of Romania.^[12]

The PNL leader, Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu, was assigned the difficult task of building a coalition government excluding the PSD. In December 2004, the new coalition government (PD, PNL, PUR and UDMR) under prime minister Tăriceanu was sworn in.^[13] Soon disputes appeared between the parties of the coalition. Prime minister Tăriceanu, leader of the PNL, and president Băsescu, constitutionally independent but generally regarded as de facto leader of the PD, accused each other of supporting illegitimate business interests. The PUR left the coalition after Băsescu declared that the party's participation in the coalition was an "immoral solution", leaving the government with limited support in the Parliament. The frequent disputes between the prime-minister and the president also caused a faction of the PNL supportive of Băsescu to split and form the Liberal Democratic Party (Romania).

Romania joined the European Union, alongside Bulgaria, on 1 January 2007.^[14]

The disputes between the PNL prime minister and the president ultimately led to the expulsion of the PD ministers from the government. The PNL and UDMR formed a minority government, with intermittent support in Parliament on behalf of the PSD. As the conflict between the president and parliamentary parties continued, in May 2007, the PNL, PSD, PC (former PUR), and UDMR voted to impeach Băsescu for alleged violations of the constitutions. Nicolae Văcăroiu, the president of the Senate became ad interim president, however Băsescu was reinstated as a national referendum turned down the proposal to depose him. The relations between the president and the parliamentary parties other than PDL (formed after PD and PLD merged) remained tense for the following two years. EU membership and the reduced government powers favoured foreign investment and the Romanian economy.

In late 2008, the government lost the legislative elections, while PSD and PDL won roughly the same number of seats. An uneasy coalition was set up between the two parties, with the PDL president,

In 2009, President Traian Basescu was re-elected for a second five-year term as the President of Romania.^[15]

In January 2014, Romania's supreme court sentenced former prime minister Adrian Năstase, who held office between 2000 and 2004, to four years in prison for taking bribe.^[16] In 2014, Klaus Iohannis was elected as the President of Romania,^[17] and he was re-elected by a landslide victory in 2019.^[18]

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