The merger of the ten localities set to form a single town hall around Ungheni has moved from principle to numbers. On 8 July, the process’s Joint Working Group held two workshops in which it analysed the public assets of each locality, the budgets of the ten town halls and the staffing of the future administration, according to the Ungheni municipal town hall. The most concrete figure to come out of the discussions: a consolidated budget estimated at about 350 million lei.
It is the next step after the second public consultation, opened on 2 July on the national platform particip.gov.md, with a deadline of 22 July. The ten units — Ungheni municipality, the communes of Zagarancea, Mănoilești, Valea Mare, Morenii Noi and Florițoaia Veche, the villages of Cetireni, Unțești and Costuleni, plus the commune of Brătuleni from the Nisporeni district — together add up to about 44,000 inhabitants. After the consultation and the vote in each council, the consolidated file goes to the State Chancellery.
How much the 350-million figure weighs
The 350-million sum is, for now, a workshop estimate, not an audited budget — a breakdown across the ten town halls has not been made public. The order of magnitude is, however, plausible: Ungheni municipality alone has 2026 revenue of about 234.8 million lei, according to the budget decision approved by the municipal council. That is already almost two thirds of the figure cited — consistent with the municipality’s weight, which alone holds about 60% of the future entity’s population. The remaining roughly 115 million would come from the nine small localities.
Alongside the money, the workshops also put on the table the other two practical questions of a merger: what happens to the public assets of each locality, which would be managed as one, and what the staffing of a single town hall looks like instead of ten.
The reform advances across the district
The process around Ungheni is not isolated. On 9 July, the government’s secretary general, Alexei Buzu, announced that 773 town halls are involved in the voluntary amalgamation, of which 112 are merging around district centres, and the Ungheni district is among the reform’s front-runners. The voluntary mergers have a deadline of the end of July; for town halls remaining below the 3,000-inhabitant threshold, the reform provides for a stage of compulsory amalgamation after the 2027 local elections.
But not everyone agrees: the voice of Cornești
In the same days, the district’s first institutional voice of opposition was also heard. The town hall of Cornești — a town that is not part of the ten-locality cluster around Ungheni — published a message challenging the very premise of the reform, titled “If we abolish the town halls, will the villages flourish?”.
the town hall is not the main problem of local development. The development of villages depends on quality policies and public services that encourage people to stay and build a home here.
Cornești Town Hall
The message questions the reform’s arguments: that the mayor’s office is the obstacle to local development, that welfare will rise once the village town hall disappears, or that villages without a town hall will become more attractive to investors. Cornești is itself a small town, below the 3,000-inhabitant threshold on which the reform rests — so, in principle, a locality the reform concerns. The town’s mayor is Angela Vatamaniuc.
Public opposition, administrative participation
Here comes a detail that nuances the message. The same town hall that publicly challenges the reform is at the same time running the amalgamation questionnaires: through disposition no. 66 of 2 July 2026, signed by mayor Angela Vatamaniuc, the town of Cornești set up the group responsible for distributing and collecting the voluntary-amalgamation questionnaires. In other words, the town is formally in the consultation stage of the reform its mayor criticises — a consultation that, by its nature, can also end in a refusal.
Cornești’s position fits a broader line. The Congress of Local Authorities (CALM), which represents mayors, supports modernisation through voluntary mergers but rejects forced amalgamation and asks that villages decide voluntarily whom to merge with. And the underlying tension remains the one we documented earlier: the reform is voluntary in the letter and strongly incentivised in fact — the state offers 3,000 lei for each inhabitant of a merged entity, with no penalty clause for those who refuse, but town halls below the threshold — 23 of the 33 in the Ungheni district — have structurally weaker access to funding.
For the cluster around Ungheni, the timetable stays fixed: recommendations on the draft decision are accepted until 22 July, then each local council votes. Only then will it become clear whether the 350 million lei remain a workshop estimate or become the budget of a single town hall.