The Week in Review
A look at the main stories in Romania this week.
Bogdan Matei, 28.03.2026, 14:00
Government passes emergency order as war in the Middle East enters its first month
The Romanian government on Thursday adopted an emergency order to declare a fuel market crisis until the middle of the year and impose caps and restrictions to mitigate the price explosion caused by the new war in the Middle East, which started at the end of February.
From April 1, for three months, companies in the oil sector are to apply a limited commercial markup amounting to last year’s average. Businesses applying commercial markups above the permitted level will face fines ranging from 0.5 to 1% of their 2025 turnover. Businesses are also to reduce the biofuel content in petrol from 8 to 2 percent. Diesel oil exports can only be made with the approval of the economy and energy ministries. Without these approvals, companies face fines amounting to between 5 and 10% of their turnover and the goods resulting from exports will be confiscated.
The government says this package of measures is intended to split the costs between the government, the private sector and the population and to provide solutions that have minimal collateral effects in the market, and that are transparent and easy to implement. The most important thing for the market is competition, and solving a crisis implies cutting taxes, more precisely the excise duties or the VAT, said in response the president of the Romanian Energy Suppliers Association, Laurenţiu Urluescu. This view is also shared by a number of economic analysts interviewed by Radio Romania.
The country’s most representative trade union confederations refused to attend a meeting to discuss this subject as part of the National Tripartite Council for Social Dialogue, where they were supposed to meet political decision-makers and representatives of employers. Trade union leaders are accusing the government of a lack of genuine consultation with their social partners and call for the reduction of VAT and excise duties on fuels.
Hypothesis: Romania in the Strait of Hormuz
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan said Romania could take part in mine clearing missions in the Strait of Hormuz, now blocked due to the war, but only after a truce is reached between the protagonists: the United States and Israel, on the one hand, and Iran, on the other. At this point, Romania is only conducting analyses and theoretical discussions about how it could get involved in this endeavor, defence minister Radu Miruţă told Radio Romania.
The miners return to Bucharest
A few hundred miners from the Jiu Valley protested on Tuesday outside the government headquarters, dissatisfied with the loss of jobs and the fact that, in the midst of the global energy crisis, their new collective employment agreement is yet to be signed. They are calling on the authorities to renegotiate the deadlines for ending mining, as pledged by Romania under its National Recovery and Resilience Plan agreed by the Bucharest government with the European Commission. The security forces used tear gas after demonstrators pushed their way past the fences around the designated protest area. Otherwise, the media gave little coverage to the protest. Not so in the early 1990, when miners used to stage frequent rallies in Bucharest, either to violently repress opposition to the first post-communist regime, of left-wing orientation, or with the open aim of overthrowing governments whose social policies they disliked.
108th anniversary of Basarabia’s unification with Romania
Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan recalled that March 27 marks the anniversary of 108 years since the Union with Romania of Basarabia (a province with a majority Romanian population that was, for more than a century, under the occupation of the Tsarist empire), a historical moment he describes as “the first cornerstone of national reunification”, in the wake of World War I.
The prime minister laid wreaths of flowers at the graves of some of those who contributed to the 1918 Union, and who, in 1940, when Romania ceded Bessarabia, following an ultimatum issued by Stalin’s Soviet Union, took refuge from the occupiers here. They ended up in the prisons of the communist regime that came to power in Romania after World War II with the help of the Soviet occupation troops. “May God rest the souls of the martyrs and heroes of our nation!”, said Ilie Bolojan in a social media post. Present-day Republic of Moldova was established on most of the eastern Romanian territories annexed by the Russians 86 years ago.
Romania’s national football squad to miss the World Cup
The Romanian national football team failed to qualify for the World Cup after being defeated by Turkey 1-nil on Thursday evening away in Istanbul in the play offs semi-finals ahead of the final tournament hosted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The sports press in Bucharest says this failure is the end of the road and the end of the career for the otherwise respected coach Mircea Lucescu, now in his 80s, whose record includes a number of championship titles in Romania, Turkey and Ukraine, and a UEFA Cup title while managing Galatasaray Istanbul. Lucescu was also managing the Romanian national side in 1984, when Romania qualified for the first time for the European Championship, that time hosted by France. Back in those days, only eight teams took part the European tournament.
The press says Lucescu’s most likely successor is former international player Gheorghe Hagi, aged 61, the only man in Romanian football whose track record includes national championship titles as a player, coach, and club president and founder. Romania last qualified for a World Cup tournament in 1998.
