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Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu announced his resignation as president of the PSD, during the informal meeting of the social democratic leadership on Monday evening.
The official announcement of the resignation has been though made at the meeting of the National Political Council today.
“Today I took a difficult but necessary step: I ended my mandate as president of the Social Democratic Party, with a heart full of gratitude and respect for all those who stood by me in this project,” Ciolacu wrote on Facebook.
“I will remain a leftist all my life. I remain close to you, as a member of this great political family, with all confidence that the Social Democratic Party will continue to be the main force of balance and progress in Romania,” Ciolacu also said.![]()
The interim leadership of the party will be taken over by one of the first vice-presidents, Sorin Grindeanu. He won against Daniel Băluță with 87 votes to 14. 6 votes were annulled.
“I start by thanking the former president for how I led the party over these years, it’s the first thing I want to do. I also thank my colleagues who have given me their trust and concretely. PSD was and is the party of reason and solutions, today I listened to the administrative side which is more of an internal kitchen, I listened to many colleagues who told me how we should act, whether we are talking about public policies or what characterized us during the years of PSD militancy. I think that a much more direct and better dialogue is necessary during this period (with the party base, ed.). The Congress must clarify all things in PSD. There are things that will undergo developments in the coming period and we will communicate. I think dozens of colleagues took the floor with a common denominator, to show unity in what we are doing. I understood the message of the people and we must meet them with solutions and reason,” said Grindeanu after the meeting.
“The majority opinion within the party is to enter the opposition, but a constructive opposition. There is a period of decisions that must be supported in parliament. The future government must have the support of the PSD, in rational, logical and good solutions for Romanians. Let’s see what the others want, those who want to build a pro-European majority. We received an open mandate for negotiations with the president and other political parties. We are open to any solution,” Grindeanu also announced.
The President of the Timiș County Council, Alfred Simonis, also announced that PSD leaders decided that the party would participate in negotiations with Nicușor Dan, to form a majority, but without a clear mandate.
Ciolacu’s resignation comes in the context of Nicușor Dan winning the presidential elections, and in the following days he must designate a candidate for the position of prime minister, a position from which Ciolacu already resigned on May 5, the day after the first round of the elections.
Marcel Ciolacu has led the Social Democratic Party since November 26, 2019, when he took over the leadership of the party after the failure of the then leader, Viorica Dăncilă, in that year’s presidential elections.
Ciolacu was reconfirmed as president following a PSD congress held in August 2020. He was the party’s candidate in the November 2024 presidential elections, but missed the second round, a first in the history of the Social Democrats. He obtained 19.15% of the votes and ranked third, after Călin Georgescu (score 22.95%) and Elena Lasconi (score 19.17%). This is the lowest score ever obtained in an election by a PSD candidate. Following this failure, Ciolacu announced his resignation from the party leadership.
“Last night I gave the secretary general his resignation, today at 5:00 p.m. I convened a national political council and we will communicate the decision we will make,” announced Marcel Ciolacu, from the PSD headquarters, on November 25, 2024.
He later reversed his decision to resign, citing a discussion with the party’s regional leaders, who asked him to remain in office.
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