The Ungheni Municipal Council met on Friday, July 24, in an extraordinary session, and the Mayor’s Office presented the outcome as a turning point: “through the adopted decisions, we have opened the way toward a new model of administrative organization — a stronger, more united municipality,” the administration wrote on its page, also publishing the recording of the session. It is the city’s own step in a process it has been working on since the beginning of the year: the voluntary amalgamation of the municipality with nine surrounding localities.
What the decision actually means
The amalgamation that each council in the group votes on in turn has identical content, fixed in law. According to the template decision — the same one the satellite councils have already adopted — the merger of ten administrative-territorial units is approved: the municipality of Ungheni, the communes of Zagarancea, Mănoilești, Valea Mare, Morenii Noi and Florițoaia Veche, the villages of Cetireni, Unțești and Costuleni in the Ungheni district, and the commune of Brătuleni in the Nisporeni district. The municipality of Ungheni is chosen as the administrative center of the new unit because it obtained the highest score under the criteria of Law No. 225/2023 on voluntary amalgamation.
The combined population of the ten localities is estimated at 42,316 residents, according to National Bureau of Statistics data — a threshold far above the legal minimum of 3,000 and one of the largest amalgamation clusters in the country. The amalgamation decisions take effect upon inclusion in the State Register of Local Acts and can be challenged within 30 days at the Ungheni Court.
What is not yet known
At the time of this article’s publication, the text of the decision adopted by the Ungheni Municipal Council on July 24 was not yet available in the State Register of Local Acts — where acts appear with a delay of several days. This means that the exact number of the decision, its wording, and the result of the vote in the chamber (how many councilors were in favor, how many against or abstained) are yet to be confirmed from the document, not from the administration’s announcement. The number, wording, and voting result will be readable in the register in the coming days, once the act is published. For the same reason, for the content of the amalgamation we rely on the identical template decision already published by the neighboring councils.
Where the process stands
The municipality does not vote alone. From its cluster, so far the following have publicly registered their final amalgamation decision: the council of Florițoaia Veche (on July 17, with 8 votes in favor, none against), Unțești (July 21), Valea Mare and Morenii Noi (both on July 23). The rest — Zagarancea, Mănoilești, Cetireni, Costuleni and Brătuleni — have gone through the preparatory stages, but their final decisions did not yet appear in the register. As the administrative center, the Ungheni Mayor’s Office is tasked with consolidating the file with everyone’s decisions and submitting it to the State Chancellery.
Over this calendar looms the July 31 deadline, circulated as a cutoff date. The Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery clarified for Triunghi.md that it is an operational, not a legal deadline, and the voluntary nature of the process remains. It is also important not to confuse the clusters: the amalgamations around Pîrlița and Sculeni are separate processes, with their own votes, not parts of the municipality.
What is at stake for residents
Beyond the map, amalgamation changes budgets and administration. The consolidated budget of the future municipality was estimated, in the working group’s meetings, at about 350 million lei, and the new unit’s vision document provides for a scheme of 128 positions, compared with the 151.75 in the mayor’s offices taken separately — that is, less bureaucracy, the initiators promise. The state also offers financial incentives: the municipality requested a first organizational tranche of 600,000 lei, calculated according to population.
One point worth stressing, because it is easy to misunderstand: the 3,000 lei per resident promised as support does not enter the local budget as a single sum. According to the summary from the public consultations, it is allocated in stages, for concrete investment projects, in the 2027–2028 budget years, after an amendment to local finance legislation, and the fund is managed by the State Chancellery. In other words, the money is conditioned on projects and spread over years, not transferred all at once.
The other side
Not everyone views the reform the same way. The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM) and lawyers consulted by the association have warned that the amalgamation, as it is being pushed, essentially departs from the principles of local autonomy, and the tight deadlines exert pressure they consider abusive; some voices have called for the decision to be taken by local referendum, not just by a council vote. And the process has not been uniform: the commune of Măcărești does not appear on the list of the municipality’s ten localities, after an initiating vote that failed in the council, while the town of Cornești repealed a first merger, which the State Chancellery had found to have an illegal perimeter, and resumed the procedure in a separate cluster, with Bumbăta.
For now, what happened on July 24 is the municipality’s step. The consolidated file of the ten localities must reach the State Chancellery, which checks legality, and the new administrative-territorial unit will take shape only after the legality opinion and the legislative amendments that will give it a status.
Update — 9 August 2026
The municipal decision has been published in the State Register of Local Acts: decision no. 6/3 of 24 July 2026 (entered in the register on 27 July), by which the Ungheni Municipal Council approves the voluntary amalgamation of the ten administrative-territorial units. The act is listed as in force. The public-consultation synthesis of 2–22 July, annexed to the decision, recorded eight observations — six accepted and two partially accepted.