Timișoara mayor Dominic Fritz wins race to head Romania’s reformist party USR

The mayor of Timișoara, Dominic Fritz, will be the new leader of the Save Romania Union party, or USR, after he received 67.2% of the votes in an internal race.

The vote for the new party president was conducted online and started Wednesday at 10 AM and ended Friday at noon. A total of 10,914 members voted, representing 57.15% of the total. As Dominic Fritz obtained more than half of the votes in the first round, there is no need to organize a second round.

USR senator Violeta Alexandru ranked second in the internal race for USR leadership, according to HotNews sources, with 22% of the votes. A former PNL member and minister, she joined USR at the end of August 2024, about 10 months ago.

Next, the party will hold a congress which will validate the new president.

A German national, Dominic Fritz first came to Timisoara as a volunteer in 2003, when he was 19. Now 41, he launched his bid for party leadership last month, proposing a “strategic reset of USR.” He also proposed changing the party's doctrine from “modern center-right,” as it currently stands, to “center,” following the line set by USR founder and now president Nicusor Dan.

Dominic Fritz is the sixth USR president in nine years, after Nicușor Dan, Dan Barna, Dacian Cioloș, Cătălin Drulă, and Elena Lasconi.

In the press conference held after the results were announced, Fritz came out against naming a technocratic prime minister as part of the ongoing talks to form a government. He maintained that USR’s proposal for the prime minister position remains the leader of the National Liberal Party, Ilie Bolojan.

“It’s not something that should worry us, the fact that negotiations for a government are taking three weeks. There are partners with different visions, we need to reach a consensus, not build a government hastily. We need a stable government; the fact that negotiations are taking longer is not a bad sign,” Fritz said when asked about governance.

He also excluded a USR merger with PNL, saying these were speculation. “The mission is to reconnect with our allies, with our voters. I will be a president who opens the party,” he assured, making a call for people to join USR.