Political analyst Marius Ghincea states that Romania is undergoing the most extensive political and cultural change since the early ’90s, and the traditional parties – PSD and PNL – are failing to adapt to the new realities.
In his opinion, young people are for the first time perfectly synchronized with Western trends, and the reconfiguration of the political scene will lead, in the next 10-15 years, to the collapse of the current dominant formations.
Ghincea argues, in an interview for News.ro, that the communism-anticommunism divide, defining the first three post-1989 decades, has been replaced by a cultural division between progressives/globalists and conservatives/sovereigntists.
New parties like AUR, SENS, and USR are capturing these segments, while PNL and PSD are facing internal blockages and losing the support of younger generations.
According to the political analyst, PNL is in a critical situation and depends almost exclusively on the image of Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan: "If we were to remove him from the equation, PNL would not enter Parliament today." At the same time, PSD, lacking appeal for the young electorate, is expected to drop to 10-12% in the next decade.
It is worth mentioning that even the Mayor of Buzău, Constantin Toma, recently stated that PSD will not even reach 10%. It is set on self-destruction.
Ghincea also explains the reasons why anti-corruption no longer mobilizes the new generations.
Youth are concerned with immediate economic and social issues - affordable housing, decent salaries, environmental protection - and the old anti-corruption discourse is perceived as failed and politically compromised. However, he believes that the theme could be revitalized if connected to current concerns, such as pollution, deforestation, or abuses in the real estate market.
Regarding young people's interest in policies like state housing, regulated salaries, or public stores, Ghincea rejects the label of "communism," arguing that such models exist in Western capitalist states. The housing issue, he says, is a real one that the free market has failed to solve: "It is not constructive to associate these solutions with communism. They are used in Switzerland, Germany, or the UK."
The political analyst concludes that the Romanian political system is entering a period of instability and reorganization, and the old parties risk becoming the "political remnants of the next decade," while the new generations will continue to push the political scene towards alignment with Western dynamics.