Romania has successfully engineered one of the largest and most popular deposit-return schemes in the world. Operating under the RetuRO framework, the initiative has captured the public’s imagination and recovered billions of beverage containers. Yet, despite this triumph, Romania remains at the absolute bottom of the European Union when it comes to overall municipal waste recycling.
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #61 (8 November 2026).
Last Friday it had been 11 years since the catastrophic fire at the Colectiv nightclub claimed 65 lives. DIICOT prosecutors say a fire near an industrial platform was sabotaged by Russian operatives; the Russian ambassador was summoned. And the Cernavodă Nuclear Power Plant, good for 20% of the country’s electricity generation, will remain offline throughout November.
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #60 (1 November 2026).
Last week another commercial cargo ship was hit, this time near the port of Constanța — a dangerous escalation in the Black Sea. After violent attacks in schools in Bistrița and Pitești, Prime Minister Luca Niculescu promises measures to improve school safety. And Romania’s inflation remains the highest in Europe while the economy has come to a standstill.
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #59 (25 October 2026).
Lawmakers approved prime minister nominee Luca Niculescu’s cabinet in a vote yesterday, which ended six months of political deadlock and offering the nation a much-needed political truce.
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #58 (21 October 2026).
Romania has a new prime minister-designate: MEP Siegfried Mureșan (PNL) has the unenviable task to pull the country out of the four-month political stalemate. Meanwhile, a Fitch analyst warned that Romania could face junk status and sheep farmer protests in Bucharest turned violent. On the upside: Romania’s energy transition strategy is shaping up.
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #57 (20 September 2026).
The publication of the renowned PISA 2025 study send shockwaves through the country this week: More than half of all Romanian 15-year-olds fail to achieve basic proficiency in mathematics, while functional illiteracy in reading has climbed to an alarming 48%. As parties in parliament remain deadlocked, the latest polling numbers show that the ongoing political crisis continues to benefit the “sovereigntists” of AUR. Meanwhile no word from the presidential palace in Cotroceni about the nomination of a new candidate prime minister…
Read further in Romanian Dispatch #56 (13 September 2026).
