EditMureșan takes his cabinet to parliament as the WSJ gas-corridor file hangs over the Bolojan collapse
The PM-designate files a 170-seat cabinet as PSD, the party that toppled Bolojan, still controls the vote - and the unanswered LNG file
Hearings on Siegfried Mureșan’s proposed government open in the Romanian parliament this afternoon. The vote is set for Wednesday. The arithmetic has not changed: the three parties behind him still do not have the numbers. What has changed is the file sitting over the crisis that created the vacancy.
On Saturday, as Prime Minister-designate, I submitted the proposed Cabinet and governing programme for Romania’s next government.
The Cabinet is made up of competent, pro-European politicians supported by three pro-European parties: the two @EPP member parties, PNL and RMDSZ,… pic.twitter.com/iszkgIYHao
— Siegfried Muresan 🇷🇴🇪🇺 (@SMuresan) September 28, 2026
On Saturday the prime minister-designate lodged a 372-measure programme and a 16-ministry list drawn from the National Liberal Party, the Save Romania Union and the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania. He described the slate as “competent, pro-European” and pointed to an independent justice minister as proof of intent. Hearings run through Tuesday evening. The plenary vote is Wednesday afternoon.
PNL, USR and UDMR together hold about 170 seats. Investiture requires 233. PSD and AUR have said they will not vote the cabinet in. This is President Nicușor Dan’s third nomination since the Bolojan government fell on 5 May. The first two failed. If this one fails as well, the path to snap elections shortens.
Romania’s Mureșan names cabinet as parliamentary support remains uncertain
That is the announcement. The background is heavier.
Three days before Mureșan filed his papers, the Wall Street Journal published an investigation into how Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador in Athens and a former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., has been selling American LNG across the Balkans through a favoured Greek intermediary. Aktor, a construction group new to the gas trade, sits in a joint venture with state-backed DEPA called Atlantic-SEE LNG. Aktor’s lobbyist, Christos Marafatsos, has sat in on Guilfoyle’s meetings so often that foreign officials took him for embassy staff. Aktor’s chief executive flew her to Bulgaria on a private jet. In Albania the same channel produced a proposed $6 billion, 20-year U.S. LNG contract.
The product Guilfoyle has been pushing is the Vertical Gas Corridor: American cargoes landed in Greece, then piped north through Bulgaria and Romania toward Ukraine. Romania is not a side note in that map. It is the transit state. It is also a producer, with Neptun Deep due to add large Black Sea volumes from 2027. That fact is what made the commercial ask in Bucharest politically explosive.
U.S. ambassador to Athens pushed Balkan LNG deals through favored firm, WSJ reports
In November 2025, at a P-TEC energy gathering in Athens, Transgaz and Cluj-based Nova Power & Gas signed a memorandum with Atlantic-SEE for up to 1.4 million tonnes of U.S. LNG a year. Nova is controlled by Teofil and Simion Mureșan — no relation to the prime minister-designate. The memorandum never became a binding sale. Ilie Bolojan refused to lock Romania into above-market prices for gas the country did not need to import in that volume, through that many intermediaries.
The documented pressure inside the Romanian state came from PSD. On 16 January, then energy minister Bogdan Ivan wrote to both Bolojan and President Dan asking for an explicit mandate to negotiate a government-to-government LNG deal via the same local intermediary, “with the support” of the foreign ministry, defence ministry and intelligence service, and warning of a possible “diplomatic blockage with the strategic partner.” Victoria Palace and Cotroceni declined. Private buyers had already walked away from U.S. LNG auctions in the region because the landed price did not clear.
On 31 March, six weeks before the government fell, Guilfoyle dined at Isoletta restaurant in Bucharest with PSD president Sorin Grindeanu, Ivan and presidential adviser Florin Vlădică. Photographs and videos circulated. Grindeanu said the conversation was about Romania’s transit role on the corridor and called any suggestion that a change of government was discussed “pure fabrication.”
The WSJ’s most damaging paragraph sits earlier that month, at a dinner in Athens. According to at least one person present, Guilfoyle referred to the coming collapse of the Romanian government and told Greek energy minister Stavros Papastavrou: “We can do this to any country we want. We can do this here too.” Papastavrou replied that the United States could not replace a government chosen by voters. Guilfoyle’s lawyer disputes the account. There is no recording. The Journal did not claim Washington wrote the censure motion. It reported what an ambassador allegedly said while she was selling American gas through a favoured firm.
On 5 May, PSD left the coalition and joined AUR in a no-confidence vote that passed 281–4, the largest such tally since 1989. The public text of the motion was austerity, taxes and state-asset sales. The sequence that Romanian outlets then laid against that text is the unsigned memorandum, Ivan’s letters, the Isoletta dinner, the Athens remark, and the vote. Some treated it as commercial pressure. Others, including Evenimentul Zilei, accused local papers of stretching a short, anonymously sourced paragraph in a longer conflict-of-interest story. No official document has been produced showing that the United States directed the parliamentary motion. What the public record contains is a lobbyist beside an ambassador, a Greek newcomer that won large regional contracts, a memorandum that never became a sale, a disputed dinner comment, a photographed meal with opposition leaders, and a domestic no-confidence vote.
That is the distinction that matters this week. The gas file does not have to be a proven foreign coup to be politically live. It is enough that PSD’s energy minister pushed a deal Bolojan would not sign, that the party then brought the government down with AUR, and that a Trump-aligned ambassador selling the same corridor later appeared in the *Wall Street Journal* claiming credit for the result. Grindeanu still wants back into government. Mureșan has ruled out AUR and has so far refused to go to PSD headquarters on Grindeanu’s terms.
Energy is on the hearing schedule today. Sebastian Burduja, nominated again for the portfolio, published his mission letter on Sunday. The priorities listed are domestic: renewables, nuclear, storage, grid modernisation, and Black Sea gas. That is the opposite commercial logic to a long-term, above-market purchase of American LNG routed through Greece. Whether parliament notices the difference on Wednesday is a separate question from whether the votes exist.
They do not, on current counting. A government of 170 cannot become a government of 233 without PSD, AUR, or a large defection neither party has offered. Mureșan is taking the list to a vote anyway. If it fails, Romania remains under a caretaker cabinet, the third nomination of the crisis is spent, and the file the Journal opened last week does not close. It becomes the atmosphere in which the next nomination is made.
This article draws on reporting by the Romanian press.
Caption: Romania’s Prime Minister-designate Siegfried Muresan answers questions during a news conference at the Parliament Palace in Bucharest, Romania, 23 September 2026. Nominated by President Nicusor Dan following political consultations, Muresan announced a proposed cabinet featuring three deputy prime ministers ahead of a confidence vote in Parliament scheduled for 29 September. EPA/ROBERT GHEMENT
Updated: September 28, 2026 - 08:01
