Sorin Grindeanu and PSD - political rebranding with the same ingredients

The extraordinary PSD congress of November 7, 2025 was far from a competition, but rather an official confirmation of the rotation within the same elite. Sorin Grindeanu entered the race for party leadership alone, the motion "United for Romanians. Strong, only together" having been announced only the day before, a sign that everything was already decided. However, any attempt made at the congress by past and present leaders of the Social Democrats to create a favorable image of Sorin Grindeanu as a reformer failed to detach him from the episode of January 30, 2017, when the government led by him adopted the famous OUG 13, which set the minimum threshold of damage for criminal liability in cases of abuse of office at 200,000 lei, the most famous case at that time being that of Liviu Dragnea, the head of the PSD between July 22, 2015 and May 27, 2019. In fact, OUG13/2017 clearly bears the signature "PRIM-MINISTRU SORIN MIHAI GRINDEANU". Its repeal by OUG 14, political chaos, street protests and, finally, the motion of censure voted by 241 parliamentarians of his own party followed. The relationship with Liviu Dragnea broke down live, with Grindeanu declaring, also in the middle of the night, "I am not resigning" and accusing: "Dragnea offered me positions so that I would resign", before being formally excluded from the party. We recall that in the conflict he had with Liviu Dragnea, when Grindeanu refused to leave the position of prime minister, although the PSD leaders requested him to do so, he was supported in those days at the Victoria Palace by former prime minister Victor Ponta, who, as a parliamentarian and president of the Pro-Romania party, advised him on how to manage the coup he was trying to carry out.

We recall that the dispute between Grindeanu and Dragnea has not ended even now. This is demonstrated by the fact that Sorin Grindeanu refused to invite Liviu Dragnea to the extraordinary PSD Congress last Friday, although he invited other former leaders of the Social Democrats: Adrian Năstase, Victor Ponta and Marcel Ciolacu. The new PSD president argued that Dragnea does not yet have the right to participate in such meetings, as this right was allegedly denied to him by the court, with the conviction in May 2019 for incitement to abuse of office.

• Sorin Grindeanu, Dragnea's second-hand prime-miniser

In response, Liviu Dragnea wrote on his Facebook page: "I had no intention of posting or talking about the PSD Congress, because it is just a political parody that will bring nothing good either for Romania or for the party members. But someone sent me some statements by Sorin Grindeanu regarding me. This character motivated my non-invitation to this Congress by the fact that I would be prohibited from participating in something like this. This is a lie". The former PSD leader shows that he does not have "such a prohibition and he (ed. - Sorin Grindeanu) knows this well". "It is impossible for such a thing to exist, it would be like me being prohibited from going out on the street to talk to people", added Liviu Dragnea, who also said that "Grindeanu asked a mutual acquaintance if it would be good to invite me to the Congress".

"He was told that there was a risk of me going on stage and speaking to PSD members, which could blow up the Congress (by the way, when he asked for this opinion, I did not have a "ban"). In conclusion, I was not invited out of cowardice, out of fear of not telling PSD the truth about the party leadership, about the interests of this group and about who is behind them", said Liviu Dragnea. The former PSD president also stated that he made this post because he does not accept Sorin Grindeanu using his name in the lie, cowardice and hypocrisy in which he lives.

In the conflict between the two, we recall that Grindeanu was not the first solution for prime minister of the former PSD president, Liviu Dragnea, he was nominated as prime minister only after the president of the country, Klaus Iohannis, refused, for reasons of national security, the nomination of Sevil Shhaideh, a key figure in the former Ponta government. Subsequently, a criminal case was filed by anti-corruption prosecutors against Sevil Shhaideh - Minister of Development in the Ponta government - in which she was accused of having ensured that, from a legislative point of view, an island in Teleorman County - Belina Island - became the private property of the County Council, at that time led by Liviu Dragnea, which leased it for a tiny sum to the real estate company Teldrum. Sevil Shhaideh was acquitted by both the Bucharest Tribunal and the Bucharest Court of Appeal, despite the prosecutors who drafted the indictment supporting the charges.

• The Nordis-Ciolacu-Grindeanu Network

The power network that supports Sorin Grindeanu is most clearly seen in Banat, where the partnership with Alfred Simonis, former president of the Chamber of Deputies, current president of PSD Timiş and of the Timiş County Council, is functioning almost demonstratively. The Social Democrats from Timiş validated Sorin Grindeanu as their candidate before the Congress, especially since he, previously, as Minister of Transport in the Ciucă and Ciolacu governments, supported the financing of all investments in transport infrastructure - road and railway - in Timiş County. In addition to the closeness to Simonis, we also mention the ties with Mihai Tudose and Paul Stănescu, who welded together in 2019, when they were all in the camp of the future president Marcel Ciolacu, when it was necessary to remove from the PSD leadership Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, who had taken over the interim leadership of the party after the imprisonment of Liviu Dragnea. The relations between Ciolacu, Tudose, Grindeanu and Stănescu have been strengthened since then and until last year, when the former PSD president, Marcel Ciolacu, asked the other three colleagues: "Mihai, Sorin and Paul, send me to Cotroceni".

Things changed after Marcel Ciolacu completely missed the presidential elections, both in the formula last autumn, when he ran for the PSD, and on May 4, 2025, when the PSD-PNL candidate, Crin Antonescu, did not make it past the first round. Ciolacu resigned from the position of PSD president, and the interim position was immediately taken over by Sorin Grindeanu. However, the perception that there would be friction between Ciolacu and Grindeanu does not stand, as long as in the partial local elections of December 7, 2025, the PSD candidate for the position of president of the Buzău County Council is none other than... Marcel Ciolacu.

It couldn't be otherwise, because between the two there is not only a political alliance, but also an economic one, which was emphasized last year by a RISE Project investigation in which it was stated that "the inseparable pair Marcel Ciolacu-Sorin Grindeanu... through their families, they also make money together", in an SRL in Timisoara represented by close relatives.

The Nordis episode followed, which consolidated the image of a privileged relationship between the two. G4Media.ro documented a total of 5 round-trip flights to Nice... chartered by Nordis, and another document shows a flight to Madrid, on which Alfred Simonis, Sorin Grindeanu and Laura Vicol were. Confronted with the respective documents, Sorin Grindeanu said: "I have receipts", "I paid my share myself", "I paid everything... it's a personal matter".

• Sorin Grindeanu, reassessed by Olguţa Vasilescu

Regarding what happened at last Friday's congress, when Claudiu Manda, Olguţa Vasilescu's husband, was elected secretary general of the party, it is worth noting the skill with which Grindeanu removed past frictions. At the end of the first semester of 2017, when Sorin Grindeanu was clinging to the prime minister's chair at the Victoria Palace, refusing to resign at Liviu Dragnea's request, Olguţa Vasilescu, who was the Minister of Labor, wrote on her Facebook page: "It seems that of all the members of the government, only the prime minister did not know that a six-monthly evaluation of the implementation of the government program is made. Is the government no longer monitoring the press? At least he would have found out from TV, from the shows in which Liviu Dragnea was present. Only he (ed. note - Sorin Grindeanu) believed that he was in that chair for life.” After this moment, all PSD ministers resigned from their positions, leaving Grindeanu alone at the Victoria Palace, assisted only by Victor Ponta.

These past asperities are no longer present today in the relationship between Sorin Grindeanu and Olguţa Vasilescu, as long as the former agreed that her husband, Claudiu Manda, would become the new secretary general of the party, thus dethroning the "eternal” Paul Stănescu, the social-democratic "baron” of Olt. Olguţa Vasilescu jumped into the Grindeanu camp with weapons and luggage and, a week ago, wrote to the media that criticized the PSD president: "The entire "press resists” is behind Sorin Grindeanu today”. Olguţa's gestures of goodwill did not go unnoticed by Grindeanu, who noted the role of the Craiova family in the reconfiguration of the PSD command center, saying that "we started with... the future secretary general Claudiu Manda; I asked him if he was willing to come, let's rebuild the PSD”.

Despite the triumphalist aspect at the end of the extraordinary congress of the Social Democrats last Friday, the above links are still well imprinted in the collective mind, and this fact is reflected in a recent INSCOP poll showing that the PSD only has 19% of the citizens' voting options, while a CURS poll maintains the Social Democrats at 24%.

Basically, we are dealing with a cold snapshot of the moment, in contradiction with the official speech about the "reset" of the party delivered last Friday by Sorin Grindeanu. And if, from the tribune of the Congress, the new leader called for "a PSD that sets the tone", recycled alliances, reactivating of the old centers of power and the ritual of closing ranks show that the party has executed a controlled rotation, not a structural change.