Romania is a unitary semi-presidential republic. The head of state is President Nicușor Dan, directly elected and in office since 26 May 2025; the head of government is Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, appointed in June 2025 and serving in a caretaker capacity since his cabinet lost a no-confidence vote on 5 May 2026. Laws are made by a bicameral Parliament of two chambers, the Chamber of Deputies (331 seats after the 2024 election, 19 of them reserved for national minorities) and the Senate (136 seats), both elected for four-year terms. The framework comes from the Constitution adopted on 21 November 1991, approved by referendum on 8 December 1991 and revised once, in 2003. It is Romania's seventh permanent constitution, and it makes most sense read against the six before it.
1831–1866: The Organic Regulations and the United Principalities
In 1831 Wallachia, and in January 1832 Moldavia, received the Regulamentul Organic (Organic Regulation), a quasi-constitutional law enforced by the Russian authorities who then occupied the two Danubian Principalities. It kept rule by princes (hospodars) and placed both lands under a common Russian protectorate that lasted until 1854, but it also created the first assemblies from which the Romanian Parliament traces its origin.
After the Crimean War, the Paris Convention of 19 August 1858 replaced the Regulament. In 1859 both principalities elected the same man, Alexandru Ioan Cuza, as prince, uniting Moldavia and Wallachia in what Romanians call the Little Union. In 1864 Cuza pushed through his own organic law, the "Statute Expanding the Paris Convention", approved by plebiscite. It created a second chamber, first called the Corpul Ponderator and later the Senate, which is why Romania has had a bicameral legislature for most of the past 160 years.
1866–1938: The Hohenzollern Constitutional Monarchy
Cuza was forced out in 1866, and Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen took the throne as Carol I. The constitution promulgated on 13 July 1866 (1 July in the Old Style calendar) was modelled closely on Belgium's 1831 constitution, then regarded as the most liberal in Europe. It declared a constitutional monarchy built on the separation of powers and national sovereignty. The prince commanded the army, appointed and dismissed ministers, and sanctioned laws; the throne passed only to Carol's male descendants.
The 1866 text survived two large changes of status. Romania won its independence in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, recognised by the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, and on 15 March 1881 Parliament raised the country to a kingdom, with Carol crowned king on 10 May. After the First World War, the unions of 1918 brought Transylvania, Bessarabia and Bukovina into a much larger state, and a new constitution was needed. The 1923 "Constitution of Union", based on universal male suffrage, came into force on 29 March 1923. It kept the 1866 model of a monarch, a prime minister responsible to Parliament, and two elected chambers.
1938–1947: Royal Dictatorship, Antonescu and the End of the Crown
Parliamentary rule broke down in the late 1930s. In February 1938 King Carol II, who had long favoured personal rule, abolished the 1923 constitution and replaced it with a corporatist, authoritarian document that made his National Renaissance Front the only legal party. In 1940, after Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia and northern Bukovina to the Soviet Union, northern Transylvania to Hungary and southern Dobruja to Bulgaria, Carol abdicated and the military leader Ion Antonescu suspended the constitution, governing first with the fascist Iron Guard in the "National Legionary State" and, after breaking with the Guard in 1941, by decree. Carol's son Michael I was king in name only.
In August 1944 Michael joined a coup that overthrew Antonescu, and the 1923 constitution was restored as a stop-gap. Soviet pressure soon shaped the government: in March 1945 the king had to appoint the pro-Soviet Petru Groza as prime minister. On the morning of 30 December 1947 Groza and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej compelled Michael to abdicate, and the Romanian People's Republic was proclaimed the same day.
1948–1989: Three Communist Constitutions and Ceaușescu's Presidency
Communist Romania adopted three constitutions. The first, in March 1948, was modelled heavily on the Soviet constitution. The second, in 1952, described a country "building socialism". The third, in 1965, declared that socialism had won and renamed the state the Socialist Republic of Romania. Formally a single-chamber Great National Assembly was supreme; real power lay with the Romanian Communist Party.
Nicolae Ceaușescu became the party's general secretary in 1965 and chairman of the State Council in 1967. In 1974 he turned the chairmanship of the State Council into a full executive presidency, creating the office of President of Romania. The Great National Assembly elected him in 1974 and re-elected him unopposed in 1980 and 1985, with no term limits. He appointed and dismissed ministers himself and ruled largely by decree. This is the office the post-1989 constitution kept in name while stripping much of its power.
1989–1991: Revolution and the National Salvation Front
The Romanian Revolution began in Timișoara in December 1989 and spread to Bucharest. Over a thousand people died, and it ended with the drumhead trial and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu on 25 December. Power passed to the National Salvation Front (FSN), led by Ion Iliescu, a former Communist official sidelined by Ceaușescu. Much of the 1965 constitution was suspended.
On 20 May 1990 Romania held its first free elections since 1937, and the first ever in which voters chose the president directly. The FSN won decisively and Iliescu became the first freely elected head of state. The new Parliament then sat as a Constituent Assembly, and on 21 November 1991 it approved a new constitution by 414 votes to 95. A referendum on 8 December 1991 ratified it with 77.3% voting in favour. The 1991 text, with 152 articles in seven titles, defined Romania as a "national, sovereign, independent, unitary and indivisible state". It gave the president a four-year term, limited to two terms, made Parliament "the sole lawmaking authority", and created the Ombudsman and a Constitutional Court.
The two chambers of the new Parliament eventually moved into the building Ceaușescu had ordered on Dealul Spirii, planned as the House of the Republic and widely known after 1989 as the People's House (Casa Poporului), in central Bucharest. Designed by Anca Petrescu and built between 1984 and 1997, the Palace of the Parliament has a floor area of 365,000 m² and is described as the heaviest building in the world. Protesters in 1989 cut the communist emblem out of the tricolour, as told in our guide to the flag of Romania.
2003: The Revision for the EU and NATO
The 1991 constitution has been amended only once. A revision approved by referendum on 18–19 October 2003 took effect on 29 October. Turnout was 55.7% of about 17.8 million eligible voters, only just above the 50% threshold needed for the vote to be valid, and 89.70% voted yes; opposition parties and NGOs alleged serious irregularities. The changes were substantial:
- New articles on integration into the European Union and accession to NATO, allowing both by a vote of Parliament alone. Romania joined NATO in 2004 and the EU on 1 January 2007.
- The president's term was lengthened from four to five years, still with a two-term limit.
- Each chamber of Parliament was given its own subjects on which it acts as the "deciding chamber"; before, both houses had identical powers.
- National minorities gained the right to use their mother tongue with local administrations and the courts, and EU citizens living in Romania could vote and stand in local elections.
- Parliamentary immunity was narrowed and the constitutional duty of military service removed (conscription ended in 2006).
The revised text has 156 articles in eight titles. The Parliament is elected by party-list proportional representation, with a 5% threshold that minority organisations do not have to cross: each recognised national minority is entitled to one seat in the Chamber of Deputies. The Senate's members are elected in 43 constituencies, the 41 counties, Bucharest, and one for Romanians living abroad. The Constitutional Court has nine judges serving nine-year terms, three appointed each by the president, the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. The High Court of Cassation and Justice heads the ordinary courts.
The president works from Cotroceni Palace and the government from Victoria Palace; the government also runs 42 prefectures, one per county and Bucharest. To form a government, the president designates a candidate for prime minister after consulting the party with a parliamentary majority or, if there is none, all parties in Parliament. The candidate then has about ten days to present a cabinet and programme, which needs a majority of all deputies and senators in a joint sitting. If Parliament rejects two proposals within 60 days, the president may dissolve it. A no-confidence motion can remove the government, which can also legislate through emergency ordinances.
2004–2026: Suspended Presidents and the Annulled 2024 Election
Since 1990 Romania has had five directly elected presidents: Ion Iliescu (1990–1996 and 2000–2004), Emil Constantinescu (1996–2000), Traian Băsescu (2004–2014), Klaus Iohannis (2014–2025) and Nicușor Dan (since 2025). The president may not be a party member while in office, commands the armed forces, chairs the Supreme Council of National Defence, and represents the state abroad, while the government, answerable to Parliament, leads the public administration.
That division has been tested often. Băsescu is the only president to have been suspended by Parliament twice, in 2007 and 2012; each time a referendum on his removal failed and he returned to office.
The sharpest test came in 2024. The first round of the presidential election on 24 November was won by the independent nationalist Călin Georgescu, but on 6 December 2024 the Constitutional Court annulled the whole election, citing an alleged Russian influence operation. Iohannis resigned on 12 February 2025, and Ilie Bolojan, as President of the Senate, became acting president until the rerun. In the second round on 18 May 2025, Nicușor Dan, the mayor of Bucharest, beat George Simion of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) by 53.6% to 46.4%, and he was sworn in on 26 May.
The Parliament elected on 1 December 2024 had no majority party. The Social Democrats (PSD), the National Liberals (PNL) and the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) formed a pro-European coalition. After Dan's election, Bolojan, the PNL leader, won a confidence vote of 301 to 9 on 23 June 2025, under a deal for a PSD prime minister to take over in 2027. The PSD left the government in April 2026 and joined AUR in a no-confidence motion that brought the cabinet down on 5 May 2026. Bolojan has stayed on as caretaker, and the country his cabinet governs is covered in full in our Romania country guide.