President of Romania

President of Romania Președintele României
Standard of the president of Romania
Incumbent Ilie Bolojan Acting since 12 February 2025
Style	Mr. President (informal)
Status	Head of state Commander-in-chief
Member of	Supreme Council of National Defence European Council
Residence	Cotroceni Palace
Appointer	Popular vote
Term length	Five years, renewable once consecutively
Constituting instrument	Constitution of Romania (1991)
Inaugural holder	Nicolae Ceaușescu (communist; first established) Ion Iliescu (current constitution)
Formation	28 March 1974; 50 years ago (1974-03-28) 8 December 1991; 33 years ago (1991-12-08) (current form)
Deputy	President of the Senate
Salary	324,000 lei annually (2015)[1]
Website	Președintele României

The President of Romania is the head of state of Romania. The President is directly elected by a two-round system for a five-year term (since 2004, after the Constitution was modified in 2003). He or she can serve two terms. During his term in office, the President must not be a member of any political party.

In 1947, the Romanian People's Republic was founded after the Kingdom of Romania was dissolved. Although Constantin Ion Parhon was made chairman, the government was ran by Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, head of the Romanian Communist Party. After Dej's death in 1965, he was replaced by Nicolae Ceaușescu, who declared himself president in 1974. Ceaușescu kept his people under a totalitarian, stalinist dictatorship (similarly to Kim Il-Sung's North Korea), and, after a revolution in December 1989, Ceaușescu was executed on the 25th of December, 1989. He was replaced by Ion Iliescu, who made democratic reforms and founded Romania in its current form. The 1990 and 1991 Mineriads gave Iliescu a negative reputation, and rumors of the 1990 Elections being faked isolated Romania. Following the 1996 Elections, Emil Constantinescu (CDR) became president, whose mandate was marked by Inflation. In the 2000 Elections, far-right candidate Corneliu Vadim Tudor (PRM) won second place, but former president Ion Iliescu (PSD) was reelected. In the 2004 Elections, Traian Băsescu (PDL) barely edged out then prime-minister Adrian Năstase (PSD), a scenario which would happen agian 5 years later with PSD candidate Mircea Geoană. In 2007, Romania joined the European Union. Great turmoil started in Romania in 2012, following a refferendum to impeach Traian Băsescu, but ended in 2015, during the first mandate of president Klaus Iohannis (PNL), after the resignation of prime-minister Victor Ponta.

Key regarding the political parties of affiliation

No.	Portrait	Name (Birth–Death)	Elected	Term of office			Political Party	Ref.
				Took office	Left office	Time in office
1		Nicolae Ceaușescu (1918–1989)	1974 1980 1985	28 March 1974	22 December 1989 (Ousted)	15 years, 249 days	Romanian Communist Party (PCR)	[2]
				Despite his country's membership in the Warsaw Pact, Ceaușescu recognised the state of Israel, supported Romanian nationalism, and denounced the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia. With his 1971 July Theses speech, Ceaușescu launched a quasi-Maoist and Neo-Stalinist cultural reform. He and his wife, Elena Ceaușescu were deposed during the 1989 Romanian Revolution and were both executed three days later.

No.	Portrait	Name (Birth–Death)	Elected	Term of office			Political Party	Ref.
				Took office	Left office	Time in office
—		Ion Iliescu (born 1930)	1990	26 December 1989	20 June 1990	176 days	National Salvation Front (FSN)	[3]
				A former Romanian Communist Party (PCR) high-ranking member and subsequent relative dissident, Iliescu was one of the main founders of the National Salvation Front (FSN) during the 1989 Revolution. As a member of the FSN triumvirate, Iliescu served as the acting head of state of Romania for almost six months during the beginning of its slow transition to free market capitalism.
2			1990 1992	20 June 1990	29 November 1996	6 years, 161 days	National Salvation Front (FSN)	[3]
				The first Romanian president to have been freely and democratically elected, Ion Iliescu was an independent social democrat in geopolitical regards. He subsequently earned a negative reputation after his handling of the Mineriad's miner interventions in Bucharest. Under his first term, the current Constitution of Romania was introduced.
3		Emil Constantinescu (born 1939)	1996	29 November 1996	20 December 2000	4 years, 21 days	Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD)1	[4]
				Constantinescu was the successful candidate of the right-leaning Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) which won the 1996 general elections, consequently paving the way for the first peaceful transfer of power in post-1989 Romania. During his term as president, Constantinescu struggled with the slow implementation of the modernization and privatization process which was bogged down by excessive bureaucracy. Nonetheless, the CDR coalition managed to secure three prime ministers who initiated liberalizing economic reforms under Constantinescu's presidency, although the overall progress was meagre.
(2)		Ion Iliescu (born 1930)	2000	20 December 2000	20 December 2004	4 years	Social Democratic Party (PSD)	[3]
				Iliescu was elected to his third non-consecutive term in 2000. In March 2004, at the end of his last term, Romania joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as part of the second largest wave of expansion in Central and Eastern Europe.
5		Traian Băsescu (born 1951)	2004 2009	20 December 2004	21 December 2014	10 years, 1 day[a]	Democratic Liberal Party (PDL)2	[5]
				Elected with the support of the right-leaning Justice and Truth Alliance (DA), Băsescu won the presidency in 2004 on a platform targeting widespread political corruption. During his first term, Romania joined in the European Union (EU). In spite of the harsh opposition of the left-leaning parties (especially the PSD and the PRM), he publicly condemned the former communist regime. His second term was marked by a landslide victory of the opposition coalition, specifically the Social Liberal Union (USL), in both the local and the legislative elections of 2012, amidst heavy losses for the presidential party (i.e. the Democratic Liberal Party). Internationally, Băsescu aligned Romania closer to the United States, the European Union (EU), and NATO, maintaining a pro-Western foreign policy throughout both his terms. He was suspended twice, namely in 2007 and 2012. Both impeachment referendums were invalidated by the Constitutional Court on the grounds of low turnout, thus paving his way for a comeback to presidency.
6		Klaus Iohannis (born 1959)	2014 2019	21 December 2014	12 February 2025	10 years, 53 days	National Liberal Party (PNL)	[6]
				Elected with the support of the right-leaning Christian Liberal Alliance (ACL), Iohannis won against former USL ally and coalition partner Victor Ponta in the run-off of the 2014 Romanian presidential elections. During the presidential campaign, his platform focused on anti-corruption, judicial independence, and fiscal relaxation.[7] He is also the first Romanian President to have stemmed from an ethnic minority, as he is of German (more specifically Transylvanian Saxon) origin.[8] In the wake of the 2016 legislative elections, his first presidential term was marked by the frequent change of prime ministers made by his former and current close allies, the social democrats, as well as by the most massive and widespread series of protests to have ever occurred in the history of Romania (which were directed against the political corruption supposedly endorsed by the social democratic governments). After defeating PSD candidate Viorica Dăncilă by a landslide in both presidential election rounds during late 2019, his second term has been marked by the COVID-19 pandemic and by further political instability (resulting in the 2021 Romanian political crisis). In 2023, under his second last year of presidency, Iohannis faced a general strike of the Romanian teachers. He resigned on 12 February 2025 ahead of an impeachment vote.

Notes:

¹ Emil Constantinescu was the candidate of the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD) whose candidacy was supported as part of the larger right-leaning Romanian Democratic Convention (CDR) in both 1992 and 1996;
² Traian Băsescu was the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party (PD) whose candidacy was supported as part of the larger right-leaning Justice and Truth Alliance (DA) in 2004, alongside the National Liberal Party. In 2009, his re-election was supported only by the Democratic Liberal Party (PDL) along with a certain faction of the Christian Democratic National Peasants' Party (PNȚCD).

Nº	Portrait	Name (Birth–Death)	Term of office			Political Party
			Took office	Left office	Time in office
—		Nicolae Văcăroiu (born 1943)	20 April 2007	23 May 2007	33 days	Social Democratic Party (PSD)
			Văcăroiu, the president of the Senate, served as interim president following Băsescu's first impeachment.
—		Crin Antonescu (born 1959)	10 July 2012	27 August 2012	48 days	National Liberal Party (PNL)
			Antonescu, the president of the Senate, served as interim president following Băsescu's second impeachment.
—		Ilie Bolojan (born 1969)	12 February 2025	Incumbent	1	National Liberal Party (PNL)
			Bolojan, the president of the Senate, has been serving as interim president following Iohannis' resignation ahead of his impeachment.