Nazare would cut spending too. That's how Bolojan started as well

According to Alexandru Nazare, Romania could get a red card from the credit rating agencies if the 2027 budget again promises more than the country can pay. This time the finance minister is asking the ministries for savings, and we're right back at the scene where the PSD walked away from the government table last spring.

“Nobody has any patience left for us,” Nazare said on Friday at the Concordia economic forum. According to him, if Romania sticks to this year's deficit target and next year adopts a budget it actually keeps to, the rating agencies could restore the stable outlook. But if Bucharest again submits a budget that looks good on paper but is unsustainable in practice, the next yellow card will be skipped. In October, S&P kept Romania at the bottom of the investment-grade category with a negative outlook, and specifically noted that the prolonged political crisis could jeopardize deficit reduction. One notch down from there, and the country would already be in junk territory, making it more expensive for the state to borrow.

Nazare would shave roughly one percentage point off the deficit-to-GDP ratio each year over the next three years. The 2027 target isn't set in stone yet, but after this year's 6.2 percent it would move toward around five percent, preferably without further tax hikes. He has therefore asked the ministries for concrete proposals on what can be merged, which expenditures can be trimmed, and which investments are worth keeping funded.

Under Bolojan too, the coalition really grew loud once the savings had a name attached to them. In the summer of 2025, the former prime minister wanted to prioritize investments already underway within the Anghel Saligny local development program, and his government would also have restricted the launch of new projects. The PSD protested against the plan even then, since if an investment's benefit has to be justified before funding can be secured for it, the room for maneuver for clientelism shrinks—and with it, the room for theft. When the government fell in May, Reuters wrote that Bolojan's measures affected both PSD voters and the party's patronage network. The Social Democrats left the coalition in April, and on May 5, together with AUR and PACE – Întâi România, they brought down the government.

It took five and a half months for Romania to have a fully empowered government again. Luca Niculescu, sworn in on October 20, is an independent, as is Nazare, while the PSD received twelve seats in the eighteen-member cabinet, including the development and transport ministries. In other words, when Nazare asks for the list of which investments can wait, the Social Democrats will this time have to add some items of their own. If the answer turns out to be, once again, that the money should stay but whoever asked how it's being spent should go, we can brace for the next government crisis. Meanwhile, the rating agencies aren't obliged to wait even that half a year.

Ugar