What now? Grindeanu would team up with Simion, Hunor with Grindeanu

In Romania, the health cordon works like hospital disinfection: on paper it's everywhere, in practice who knows. On Monday evening, in the Antena 3 studio, Sorin Grindeanu, the leader of the Social Democratic Party (PSD), said out loud what an entire country had already suspected but no one had heard so plainly before: he does not rule out a PSD–AUR government. "I wouldn't rule out this option. Of course" — he said, with the casualness of someone discussing a Sunday lunch menu, not the prospect of Romania's far right coming to power. That's how much the vow that Romania's mainstream parties repeated for years — never, ever, under any circumstances with AUR — turned out to be worth.

Grindeanu saw not a matter of principle but a practical obstacle. In his view, AUR would first have to declare that it is committed to certain things, and that it actually wants to take part in a government. "Because I think they want to stay in opposition, so they can criticize non-stop. And if possible, they want to force early elections — that's their political plan." In other words, the PSD leader's problem with AUR isn't that it's extremist, but that it isn't enthusiastic enough. This is no longer a rejection but a price list, with only one item left blank: how much. He then recounted that about three weeks ago he had spoken privately, one on one, with George Simion.

"He told me very clearly that he wants early elections, nothing else, and that everything else is just a game on his part. From AUR's point of view this is understandable, since they want to cash in on the numbers they're getting in opinion polls. So I'm forced to believe George Simion."

Such deep, touching trust is rare in Romanian politics. One can almost picture the scene: two men in a quiet room, coffee, sincere words, and one of them believing the other doesn't want to govern with him. He just didn't say what the answer would be if Simion did want to — but that, he had already revealed in the studio.

The most important sentence came at the end: "The parliamentary arithmetic shows that even together we don't have a majority. We're close, PSD plus AUR, but we don't have the 233 votes." The news in that sentence isn't that a majority is missing, but how little is missing. The two factions together are close to the 233-vote threshold, and everyone in Bucharest knows exactly where the gap could be filled. There's Diana Șoșoacă's party, which outflanks even AUR on the right, and whose leader is known in the European Parliament for protesting with a muzzle over her mouth. There are the small sovereigntist factions in parliament, there's Victor Ponta, who started out in the PSD, veered toward the sovereigntist campaign, and is always ready to return wherever the spoils are being handed out. None of them has any ideological reservations about a PSD–AUR government. The missing votes, then, aren't a theoretical problem — they're a phone call or two.

The timing of the TV interview would deserve a chapter of its own. Grindeanu spoke about the possibility of a PSD–AUR government on the very same day that Călin Georgescu — the spiritual and political godfather of AUR, whose "heir" Simion presented himself as in the 2025 presidential race — was led out of the headquarters of the Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) in handcuffs. This time the charge is not conspiracy against the constitutional order but fraud worth more than one million euros; during the search, jamming devices were found along with a card that appeared to be a diplomatic ID from the Order of Malta, which the Order said it does not issue. Grindeanu found a pointed line for this too:

"These people, who appear to have ties to Russia, don't want to flee to Russia — they want to flee to Tuscany."

An accurate observation — delivered, however, with the very same ease with which he refused to rule out governing with Georgescu's heirs. All this is unfolding amid the government crisis in which President Nicușor Dan last week nominated Siegfried Mureșan, a European Parliament member from the center-right People's Party, as prime minister. Grindeanu reacted to the decision "with surprise and disappointment," and has since also taken offense that it was Ilie Bolojan, not Mureșan, who called him. "Politically speaking, it should have been Mureșan who called, not Bolojan," he said, as if arguing over a wedding seating chart. Mureșan, meanwhile, stated the essential point: the vote will be a test for the PSD — it will show whether the party sticks with AUR or votes to approve the government. Meanwhile, on social media, the familiar choreography is already in full swing: the nominee is being called a "German securist," "Germany's man," and the chosen one of "non-Romanian services" — in other words, Mureșan is getting exactly the reception that Romania's sovereigntist ecosystem reserves for anyone who is also presentable in Brussels.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ) has found its own role in this play as well: it announced that a majority in parliament can only be secured together with the PSD. Hunor Kelemen recently said that in politics "size is what matters" — and now it's clear how much: 233 votes. It's worth recalling the RMDSZ's own wavering a few weeks earlier, when several senior figures in the Alliance, including its president Hunor Kelemen, said that the RMDSZ would indeed team up with the PSD if that were what it took to form a government.

Grindeanu says he believes Simion, who, in his view, doesn't want to govern. Simion says he wants early elections, because according to the polls he stands to gain more that way. Meanwhile Georgescu is awaiting a decision on his detention, Mureșan is awaiting the vote, and the country is awaiting a fully empowered government — for five months now. No one is waiting for the cordon anymore. That was dismantled in a TV studio, between two commercial breaks.

Fallow ground

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