Premeditated regionalization, a scarecrow project

The parties have a rack of canned projects, which they put on the table whenever they feel the need for a smokescreen. Regionalization is one such project, mentioned even during the communist period, which has been brought to light and shelved at a sustained pace for 15 years. PSD President Marcel Ciolacu declared earlier this week that he wants a draft law on administrative-territorial reorganization of Romania to be drafted in the parliamentary session that will begin in February, and to work on this project, a group formed by party members was established: "I created a committee, the President of the Chamber of Deputies, with the future President of the UNCJR, with the future President of the AMR, with two representatives from each county council, from the mayors of the county capital municipalities, from cities, from communes, with two members from the Administration Committees in Parliament. I said that I would like, in this session, to come up with a territorial reorganization project."

• Government and legislative priority

The PSD spokesperson, Lucian Romaşcanu, stated that in the meeting of the party's National Political Council that took place on Monday, it was decided that a government and legislative priority for the immediate period would be the establishment of this working group to propose a draft law for Romania's administrative-territorial reform. "It is a promise that the political class has made for a very long time and that it has not yet fulfilled, and this will support the reform, so that we can dynamize, make local administrations more efficient, so that there is naturally as an immediate consequence a reduction in the administration expenses of local authorities, but also an efficiency increase in support of people through this reform," said Romaşcanu. He mentioned that there are many things that need to be discussed regarding this reform.

• USL program on regional development

Regionalization was a major project that has aroused enormous passions in recent years. Relaunched strongly in 2011, the theme was put back on the table in the 2012 parliamentary election campaign, returning to the spotlight a year later only to be abandoned again. Maps were drawn, regions were established, regional capitals were decided (they managed to declaratively contain the "local barons") after which all this work was abandoned. The aim was to decentralize the administration and reduce the number of administrative units inherited from the communist period.

The project was put on the table in June 2011. USL launched its program on regional development in which it proposed transforming the eight development regions into local administration centers, transforming the Senate into a chamber of local powers and establishing regional councils, led by an elected president. The USL model also involved the establishment of new institutions: the Regional Council - led by an elected president, the transformation of the Senate into a chamber of local powers and the emergence of regional Courts of Appeal.

• Traian Băsescu wanted eight regions

During the same period, President Traian Băsescu proposed a model that assumed that the 41 counties would be transformed into eight regions, which would have corresponded to the groups represented by the European development regions. After a while, the idea was abandoned but was revived in the 2012 electoral campaign, the project being included in the USL's 2013-2016 Governing Program. Regionalization became a campaign theme, especially in areas where there is ethnic diversity. The Minister of the Interior at the time, Mircea Dusa, wanted to intervene in the electoral debate, declaring that regionalization should be done on economic, not ethnic principles, specifying that, in his opinion, it is an insult to Romanians, especially those from Harghita and Covansa, to campaign on the autonomy of the Szeklerland. The USL, the big winner of the parliamentary elections at the time, proposed that regions be established by amending the Constitution, and the option considered was regionalization based on development regions that have been operating since 1998 and are coordinated by a regional development agency, a non-governmental, public utility body.

• Ponta - Antonescu, supporters of the idea

The Prime Minister at the time, Victor Ponta, declared that the USL version of regionalization, with the eight development regions, is not a given, but that it is the most possible. In February 2013, the Government approved the Memorandum on the adoption of the necessary measures to start the regionalization-decentralization process in Romania, and a month later, the working structures were created and the first official meetings took place. The first signs of stagnation are given by the head of the PNL, Crin Antonescu, who admitted that the regionalization project could actually be promoted "in the course of next year" (ed. 2014), also identifying the causes: "It is a regrettable postponement. We would have liked to do these things earlier, especially regionalization. But I think it is very clear to anyone that it was not the USL, not factors of political will, not us as its leaders who decided to postpone the implementation of these projects. (...) Quite simply, a Constitutional Court in which Traian Băsescu personally still has a majority decided aberrantly that the referendum law in its new form is constitutional, but it cannot be applied until after a year". Things got stuck in 2013, when the project became the subject of controversy within the USL on the PSD - PNL axis. Deputy Prime Minister Liviu Dragnea considered that it was not natural for the PSD and PNL to propose different projects on the same topic, as this represented a lack of respect for the USL voters. The project supported by the PSD provided for the establishment of Regional Development Councils, preliminary institutions for regions that benefit from a distinct legal status, until the notion of region is included in the fundamental law. The structure of the Regional Development Councils was to overlap with the configuration of the associated counties that will form a region, so as to achieve continuity in the implementation of programs through European funds.

The issue of regionalization was also touched upon by the newly elected president, Klaus Iohannis, in December 2014, after which the idea was shelved. In 2025 it returned to the forefront.