October 31, 2026
A roundup of local and world news
Newsroom, 31.10.2026, 13:55
POLL More than three-quarters of Romanians (78%) believe the country is heading in the wrong direction, and only 16% think Romania is moving in the right direction, according to an Avangarde poll conducted between October 21 and 26. If parliamentary elections were held next Sunday, 35% of the respondents would vote for the nationalist party AUR currently in opposition, and 26% for the Social Democratic Party, which is in power. These two parties are followed, at a significant distance, by the parties that were part of the ruling coalition until recently: the National Liberal Party (15%), USR (10%), and the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians in Romania (5%). Nearly one-third of the respondents (30%) believe that the top priority for Luca Niculescu’s government should be increasing wages and pensions, followed by fighting corruption and reducing the budget deficit and public debt.
PROSECUTOR Laura Codruţa Kövesi (Romania) concludes her 7-year term as head of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO), a position she took in 2019, when she became the first European Chief Prosecutor. As of November 1, the institution will be led by her deputy, the German prosecutor Andrés Ritter. According to the EPPO’s annual report, the office had over 3,600 ongoing investigations at the end of last year, with estimated damages amounting to more than EUR 67 billion. More than two-thirds of the amount accounts for proceeds from fraud involving European Union money, particularly VAT and customs duties. While voicing pride in the institution’s achievements, Laura Codruţa Kövesi pointed to challenges such as inadequate funding and personnel, delays in revising operational regulations, and pressures on the EPPO independence.
AMBASSADORS Poland’s ambassadors to Bucharest and Beijing resigned today in response to an inter-institutional dispute in Warsaw concerning the country’s Constitutional Tribunal, after the situation escalated last night. “Given the attempt to illegally take over the Constitutional Tribunal, I no longer see any possibility of continuing to serve as ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Romania,” Ambassador Paweł Soloch posted on X. Last night, police was deployed at the headquarters of the Constitutional Tribunal, which lies at the heart of a dispute between the government led by Donald Tusk and the nationalist president Karol Nawrocki, who cut short an official visit to Senegal to return to Warsaw. The conflict concerns judges appointed during the previous nationalist administration, whom the current Cabinet seeks to replace, while the president defends their tenure. A judge backed by the current administration announced the suspension of the court president, but the institution opposed the decision and labeled it an attempted coup. Protests took place outside the building, and police arrested several individuals who tried to force their way in.
FUELS The government of Romania has approved a 3-month extension of the crisis status on the crude oil and petroleum products market (until February 1). As such, current excise duty cuts on standard diesel remain in effect, so as to protect the public and the economy. The government estimates that without this measure, the already high price of diesel would have risen significantly. The crisis situation in the Romanian crude oil and petroleum products market was declared on August 7, in light of tensions and volatility in the Middle East, as well as rising international prices.
AWARD Truth requires people willing to seek it, preserve it, and defend it, said Professor Emeritus Antoon De Baets from the University of Groningen (the Netherlands), who received the Cantemir Prize in Bucharest on Friday evening. Born in 1955, Antoon De Baets teaches history, ethics, and human rights and has authored over 200 works on the censorship of history, the ethics of historians, and the history of human rights. The annual Cantemir Prize is awarded to prominent academic and cultural personalities during the Royal Conferences, a scholarly and cultural event initiated in 2017 and held under the High Patronage of Prince Radu, the spouse of the Custodian of the Crown, Margareta. (AMP)
