By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848, on the 2nd of June 2025. Link of the original article in Romanian: De la Nicușor la președintele Dan – Comunitatea Liberala.
It happened the same way back in 1996: during the campaign and on the night of victory, the crowd in the public square chanted “Emil! Emil!”, only for the elected man to become President Constantinescu a few days after the vote. Three decades later, the chant “It won’t be easy, / It will be Nicușor!” was set aside, and after the swearing-in ceremony, (almost) everyone began referring to him as President Dan.
I was present at the ceremony myself. After pointing out the urgent matter that would occupy the first weeks of his term — forming a stable majority to reduce the deficit — the new head of state listed the goals of his mandate across eleven domains, in the following order: administrative reform, the economy, health, education, justice, environment, culture, equal opportunity, foreign policy, the relationship with Moldova, and Romanians in the diaspora. His tone was far from fiery; the speech did not seek to stir public emotion, but rather to define an action plan. N. Dan will act as a kind of super-prime minister, much like Ion Iliescu during his 1992–1996 term, Emil Constantinescu, or Traian Băsescu in 2005–2007 and again in 2009–2012.
Nothing illustrates his approach to forming a government better than the way he’s gone about it: before holding the formal “consultations” required by the Constitution to nominate a prime minister, President Dan held “informal discussions” with the parties to gauge their intentions and their stance on the Cotroceni agenda. He also convened a working group to begin drafting a governing program. The process is just beginning, and it’s hard to imagine what it will produce. Dragoș Anastasiu, one of the advisors N. Dan inherited — at least until the end of June — from Ilie Bolojan, used a vivid but vague phrase: “we’re still throwing puzzle pieces onto the table.”
The fact that the new president wants to steer the executive branch became clear in how he handled the crisis at the Praid Salt Mine, caused by the recent flooding in Harghita. Nicușor Dan went to the site himself, sleeves rolled up, while the interim prime minister and his team arrived 24 hours later.
N. Dan’s authority is acknowledged by the PNL, USR, and UDMR — but not by AUR, SOS, POT, or PSD. Under its new — for now, interim — leader, the Social Democrats continue to maintain the same ambiguous posture they took between the two rounds of voting. If, ahead of the Dan-Simion final, Ciolacu and his inner circle refused to clearly encourage members to vote, now that Dan has been elected president, Grindeanu is again shifting the decision about entering government onto the shoulders of the party members. On the surface, this seems like a way of dodging responsibility, but at its core, it’s more about political gamesmanship — aimed at signaling that the direction of policy is set not by the president, but by “the PSD people,” as the phrase once went.
We’ll see in a few days whether the pressure from PSD pays off or not.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics.