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Speaking to ecstatic supporters in the early hours of Monday following his victory, he struck a reformist tone, saying Romania was beginning “a new chapter, and it needs every one of you.”“It needs experts to get involved in various public policies, it needs people in civil society, it needs new people in politics,” he said.

Cristian Andrei, a Bucharest-based political consultant, says Dan will face a string of immediate challenges, including putting together a new government in what is now a “totally new political landscape.”“He will have to push and show reforms while meeting resistance in the state apparatus and being opposed by the new populist parties that now won 5 million votes,” Andrei said. “He will be under pressure to deliver change to an exasperated Romania while trying to unify a divided country.”As a member of the EU and one of the easternmost members of the NATO military alliance, Romania plays a pivotal role in Western security infrastructure — especially since Russia’s full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine in February 2022.

After that invasion, NATO bolstered its presence on Europe’s eastern flank by sending additional multinational battlegroups to Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia, and Bucharest has played an increasingly prominent role in the alliance,and opening an international training hub for F-16 jet pilots from allied countries.

Dan said Monday he had a call with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte and that he conveyed to Rutte that Romania “will remain a steadfast ally” within the alliance. ”At the same time, we rely on NATO to guarantee Romania’s unwavering security,” he said.

Many observers saw Sunday’s vote as crucial to maintaining Romania’s place within the network of Western alliances — especially amid fears that the Trump administration is reconsidering its security commitments to the United States’ European partners.from Social Security’s inspector general states that from fiscal years 2015 through 2022, the agency paid out almost $8.6 trillion in benefits, including $71.8 billion — or less than 1% — in improper payments. Most of the erroneous payments were overpayments to living people.

In addition, in early January, the U.S. Treasury clawed backin a variety of federal payments— not just Social Security payments— that improperly went to dead people, a recovery that former Treasury official David Lebryk said was “just the tip of the iceberg.”

The money was reclaimed as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave thetemporary access to the