PSD vice-president Gabriel Zetea said on Digi24 on Monday evening that the Development Ministry’s first draft text on voluntary local mergers should appear next week. Criteria analysis for the mergers — decided after local referendums — could be finished “in a month or two,” including with artificial intelligence tools.

In the party’s view, the reform has two stages. Until March, willing communes can merge voluntarily: a local referendum, plus investment programmes and tax relief the ministry has floated for localities preparing to join new commune centres.

After March, PSD wants a formula Prime Minister Luca Niculescu would assume in Parliament, following public debate and talks with other parties. Zetea stressed the map should not be drawn “from a desk” in Bucharest, but in the counties, through local committees with elected officials and county council presidents.

“PNL, for example, holds half of Romania’s county council presidencies,” he noted, arguing PSD does not decide alone in many counties. Locally, seven criteria would matter — not only population: connectivity, proximity to a potential centre, access to social services, roads, distances, own revenues and a cost–benefit look at local administration.

“Population must not be treated as the only valid criterion,” Zetea said. On AI tools, he argued they can stitch databases together “so you don’t need hundreds of people sitting in commissions,” and that as a county council president he will go into the field himself.

Mayors of small communes would have a few months in this phase to decide whether to unite. After the March deadline, some mergers could become mandatory; the exact threshold — including whether it stays at communes under 1,500 residents — has not been settled yet.

Image: Sighetu Marmației City Hall (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0).

Sources consulted: PSD leader on voluntary mergers: Government draft due next week — Digi24.