Following the Romanian Revolution which toppled Romania's hardline Communist government and the execution of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu in December 1989, the National Salvation Front seized power, led by Ion Iliescu. The Front transformed itself into a political party in short time and overwhelmingly won the general election of May 1990, with Iliescu as president. The first half of 1990 was marked protests, some of them violent. Most notable was the brutal intervention of coal miners of the Jiu Valley, called in to suppress rioting in central Bucharest.
Subsequently, the Romanian government undertook a programme of free market economic reforms and privatization, following a gradualist line rather than shock therapy throughout the early and mid 1990s. Economic reforms have continued, although there was little economic growth until the 2000s. Social reforms soon after the revolution included easing of the former restrictions on contraception and abortion. Later governments implemented further social policy changes.
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.
In recent years, Romania has become more closely integrated with Western institutions, becoming a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 2004 and of the European Union (EU) in 2007.
Following political instability in the wake of the cancellation of the 2024 presidential election due to alleged Russian interference favouring first round winner Călin Georgescu, a new election has held in May 2025 with Nicușor Dan assuming the presidency.
Revolution
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 Nicolae Ceaușescu had his apparatus gather a mass-meeting in Bucharest downtown in an attempt to rally popular support for his regime and publicly condemn the mass protests of Timișoara. This meeting mirrored the mass-meeting gathered in 1968 when Ceaușescu had spoken out against the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact countries. This time, however, the people turned angry and riot broke out. During the events of the following week, marked by confusion and street fighting, it is estimated that 1,051 people lost their lives. Ceaușescu was arrested in Târgoviște. After a summary trial by a kangaroo court, he and his wife were executed on 25 December. Most members of the government, as well as a limited number of lower level officials were convicted for perpetrating or enabling the violence in trials that lasted several years.
During the Romanian Revolution, power was taken by a group called the National Salvation Front (FSN), which gathered dissidents, both from within the Communist Party and non-affiliated. The FSN quickly assumed the mission of restoring civil order and immediately took democratic measures. The Communist Party was de facto banned, and Ceaușescu's most unpopular measures, such as bans on abortion and contraception, were rolled back.
1990–1996
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 had no held top positions in 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 President of Romania. The FSN also secured more than two-thirds of the seats in Parliament. Petre Roman, a professor at the Polytechnic University of Bucharest, son of Valter Roman, a Communist official and veteran of the Spanish Civil War, remained Prime-Minister (position he held immediately after the Revolution). The new government, which included some former low-key members of the Communist party, promised the implementation of some free market reforms.
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.Deletant, Dennis. "The Security Services since 1989: Turning over a new leaf." (2004) Carey, Henry F. Romania since 1989: politics, economics, and society. Lexington Books: Oxford. Page 507. Baleanu, V G. The Enemy Within: The Romanian Intelligence Service in Transition. January 1995. Conflict Studies Research Centre, The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst: Camberley, Surrey GU15 4PQ. Parliamentary inquiries showed that members of the government intelligence services were involved in the instigation and manipulation of both the protesters and the miners, and later, in June 1994, a Bucharest court found two former Securitate officers guilty of ransacking and stealing $100,000 from the house of a leading opposition politician.
In December 1991, a new constitution was drafted and subsequently adopted, after a popular referendum. March 1992 marked the split of the FSN into two groups: the Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN), led by Ion Iliescu and the Democratic Party (PD), led by Petre Roman. Iliescu won the presidential elections in September 1992 by a clear margin, and his FDSN won the general elections held at the same time. With parliamentary support from the nationalist Romanian National Unity Party (PUNR), Greater Romania Party (PRM), and the ex-communist Socialist Party of Labour (PSM), a new government was formed in November 1992 under Prime Minister Nicolae Văcăroiu, an economist and former bureaucrat during the Ceaușescu administration. The government took some limited steps towards the liberalisation of the market, started a privatisation program through management employee buyouts and sought to further relations with the Euro-Atlantic structures (the EEC/EU and NATO; the Snagov Declaration of 21 June 1995 committed the Romanian parliamentary political parties to Romania's accession to the EU). The FDSN changed its name to Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR) in July 1993 after the merger with several smaller left-wing parties. This coalition dissolved before the November 1996 elections. This coincided with the bankruptcy of the Caritas pyramid scheme, a major scandal at the time in Romania.
Economy Data from unless otherwise specified. 19891990199119921993199419951996GDP in billions of US$ 53.7 38.3 28.9 19.6 26.4 30.1 35.5 35.3 Real change in GDP -5.8% -5.6% -12.9% -8.8% 1.5% 3.9% 7.1% 4.1% Budget deficit (% of GDP) 7.5% 0.3% -1.9% -4.4% -2.6% -4.2% -4.1% -4.9% Current account (% of GDP) andexports / imports (in billions of US$) 5.6%10.5 / 8.4 -8.7%5.8 / 9.2 -3.5%4.3 / 5.7 -8.0%4.3 / 6.2 -4.5%4.9 / 6.5 -1.4%6.2 / 7.1 -5.0%7.9 / 10.3 -7.3%8.1 / 11.4 Largest economic sector (% of GDP) Industry (46.2%) Industry (40.5%) Industry (37.9%) Services (40.6%) Services (37.0%) Industry (36.2%) Services (36.1%) Services (36.7%)Share of the private sector (% of GDP) ? 16.4% 23.6% 26.4% 34.8% 38.9% 45.3% 54.9% Unemployment rate 3.0% 8.2% 10.4% 10.9% 9.5% 6.6% Total external debt (in billions of US$) 0.0 0.2 2.2 3.5 4.5 5.5 6.7 9.2 Public debt (% of GDP) ? 1.0%(lowest in the world) 2.7%(lowest in the world) 11.1%(6th lowest in the world) 11.7%(6th lowest in the world) 14.4%(9th lowest in the world) ? ?External public debt (% of GDP)U.S. Government Printing Office, 1997, Country Reports on Economic Policy and Trade Practices, pp. 162-163 ? ? ? ? ? 13.95% 13.80% ? Average gross monthly wage (US$) ? ? ? $83 (nominal) ? $86 (nominal)$255 (PPP) $104 (nominal)$285 (PPP) $104 (nominal)$305 (PPP)
1996–2000 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.