Veteran MEP Mureșan accepts nomination to form Romania’s next government

Siegfried Mureșan, a long-serving Romanian MEP and vice-president of the European People’s Party, has accepted President Nicușor Dan’s nomination to form a new government. The 44-year-old Liberal said Romania needs a “credible government as soon as possible” so that citizens and international partners can rely on predictability and responsibility.

Mureșan now has 10 days to present a cabinet and seek a parliamentary confidence vote. He is the third nominee since the previous government collapsed, and he starts well short of the 233 votes required. His backers – the National Liberal Party, Save Romania Union and the ethnic Hungarian UDMR – can muster roughly 186–190 votes even with support from national-minority deputies.

The crisis began on 5 May 2026, when parliament passed a no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan’s coalition. The Social Democrats, then the largest party in government, joined the nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) to bring the cabinet down over austerity measures and plans to list state assets. Bolojan has continued as caretaker ever since. Two earlier presidential nominations failed to win a majority. President Dan has accused parties of putting electoral calculations ahead of the national interest and has acknowledged that no defined parliamentary majority exists.

A failed investiture would raise the prospect of snap elections. Recent polling shows AUR, led by George Simion, leading with around 40 percent – well ahead of the Social Democrats and Liberals, neither of which exceeds 20 percent. Pro-European parties fear that an early vote would further strengthen AUR rather than resolve the deadlock. The prolonged stalemate has already added pressure on Romania’s EU recovery funds, budget deficit and investment-grade credit rating.

Mureșan is one of Romania’s most connected figures in Brussels. Born in Hunedoara in 1981 to a Romanian father and a Transylvanian Saxon mother, he is bilingual in Romanian and German. He studied economics at the Bucharest Academy of Economic Studies and completed a master’s at Humboldt University in Berlin. After a Bundestag internship and three years as an adviser in the German parliament, he moved to the EPP headquarters in Brussels. First elected to the European Parliament in 2014, he is now in his third term. He serves as vice-chair of the EPP Group, vice-president of the EPP itself, and has been a lead negotiator on the EU budget and the Recovery and Resilience Facility. Supporters present him as a technocratic, pro-European economist with experience managing large-scale funds; critics from AUR and parts of the Social Democrats portray him as too closely tied to Brussels.

Whether those connections can translate into the missing votes in Bucharest will decide if Romania exits its longest post-communist government crisis or heads toward elections that current polls suggest would favour AUR.

Caption: Siegfried Mureșan photographed on 16 June 2026 [European Parliament Multimedia Centre]