Appointment

Following the electoral victory of the Social Democratic Party in the legislative election, Liviu Dragnea, the party's leader was set to become the next Prime Minister after he secured an alliance with former PM Călin Popescu-Tăriceanu's party and formed a parliamentary coalition. As per the Romanian constitution, after a legislative election, the President of Romania, after consulting all the parties in Parliament, has to designate an individual proposed by the coalition or the party that has an absolute majority in Parliament to become the next Prime Minister. President Iohannis had said before and after the election that he would not appoint an individual that was either prosecuted or convicted before, alluding to Dragnea's two-year suspended sentence in a case of electoral fraud. After exhausting all possible ways of removing his sentence, Dragnea decided to stop pursuing the premiership and nominated Sevil Shhaideh for the position.^[11] President Iohannis, however, refused to nominate Shhaideh, did not offer a reason for his refusal, and requested that the leaders of the majority coalition make another proposal.^[12] Had she been designated and sworn into office, Shhaideh would have been the first woman PM, the first PM from an ethnic minority and also the first PM from a religious minority.

Following the refusal, Dragnea mentioned a possible impeachment of the president, but ultimately decided to make another nomination. Grindeanu became the coalition's second proposal. President Iohannis designated Grindeanu as Prime Minister on 30 December 2016 and he was finally sworn in on 4 January 2017.

Ordinance Bill No. 13

Early into his premiership, Grindeanu was faced with widespread protests all over the country after his government proposed an ordinance bill regarding the pardoning of certain committed crimes, and the amendment of the Penal Code of Romania to decriminalise abuse of power if the amount of money stolen was less than 200.000 RON.^[13] Despite the negative reactions from both the judicial institutions and the public, the newly sworn in government^[14] approved an ordinance modifying the Penal Code and Penal Procedure Code during the night of 31 January. Soon after a government meeting, the Ministry of Justice published the bills on its website and sent them to the relevant judicial institutions for consultations. The government's main stated reason for these bills was that prisons were overcrowded and in order to avoid paying a fine to the European Court of Human Rights, such measures were needed to improve the conditions in prisons.^{[15] [16]} Opponents raised accusations that the ordinance was intended for decriminalisation of government corruption, and to help hundreds of current and former politicians to escape ongoing criminal investigations or prison sentences.^[17] Over the span of a few days, the protests had become the largest since the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with the number of protesters on the streets of Bucharest peaking to 600,000 on 5 February 2017. This prompted Grindeanu and his government to repeal the ordinance, and the Minister of Justice, Florin Iordache resigned on 9 February 2017.^[18]

Loss of political support

The relationship between Dragnea and Grindeanu slowly deteriorated starting April 2017 with sources pointing to the lack of trust between the two, the former believing the latter was interesting in creating a power pole in order to challenge his leadership. Dragnea later asked for Grindeanu's resignation as Prime Minister, which the latter refused.^[19] As a consequence, Dragnea convened the executive committee of the Social Democratic Party in order to review the cabinet's implementation of the governing programme with which the party won the legislative election back in 2016. Before the committee came to its conclusion, ALDE had already withdrawn its support of Grindeanu's Cabinet. Soon after Dragnea and PSD also withdrew their support and all the ministers resigned, leaving only Grindeanu as part of the government. Grindeanu refused to resign, citing his responsibility as Prime Minister of Romania. The coalition is expected to start a motion of no confidence against their own government in order to force Grindeanu out, sometime during June.^[20]

On 15 June 2017, Grindeanu was excluded from the Social Democratic Party by the executive committee of the PSD.^[21] Following Grindeanu's exclusion from the party, wings of the party and certain local organisations (Timiș^[22] and Iași^[23]) have declared their support for Grindeanu and former PM, Victor Ponta also joined his government as general secretary^[24] in spite of Dragnea's threats of exclusion from the party against all those who would abstain or vote against the motion of no confidence.^[25] On 21 June 2017, the motion of no confidence was passed by Parliament with 241 votes (233 were needed), thus ending Grindeanu's premiership.^[26]