In Ungheni district, it is no longer one large town hall taking shape, but two. Alongside the bloc of ten localities around the municipality of Ungheni, the commune of Sculeni is gathering its own cluster: it is merging with Cioropcani, Buciumeni — both in Ungheni district — and with Taxobeni, a commune from the neighbouring district of Fălești. Together, the four would form a town hall of about 7,400 inhabitants, on the border with Romania.
What the Government’s video shows
The merger was promoted by Alexei Buzu, the Secretary General of the Government and coordinator of the local-administration reform, in a video posted on his Facebook page. “The town hall of Taxobeni village in Fălești district is merging with the Sculeni town hall in Ungheni district. Two more town halls will join this cluster,” the message says. On camera is the mayor of Taxobeni commune, Lilia Dubasari.
The wording suggests a process only just beginning, but those “two town halls” are not a future addition: they are Cioropcani and Buciumeni, in the cluster since spring. According to the local press, which cites the Sculeni town hall, talks with residents began in November 2025, and the Sculeni local council approved the initiation of the merger with the three communes in May. On 4 June the working groups met. The Government’s video thus comes on top of an already advanced local process.
Four communes, about 7,400 inhabitants
Sculeni is the core of the new entity — the largest of the four and the only one with a border crossing into Romania, the Sculeni customs point, one of the busiest on the Prut. According to the 2024 census, the commune has 3,773 inhabitants; to them are added Cioropcani (1,567), Taxobeni (1,069) and Buciumeni (968) — about 7,377 people in all.
None is what it once was. Sculeni itself fell from 5,470 inhabitants in 2004 to 3,773 today — precisely the demographic decline the reform invokes as the reason for consolidation.
A second pole in the district
The Sculeni case shows that, in Ungheni district, the reform no longer means a single map. The municipality of Ungheni opened the merger with nine localities on 10 June, as Triunghi reported; separately, the commune of Măcărești voted for its own step toward the city in a general assembly. The Sculeni cluster is a third strand — a second consolidated pole, in the north of the district.
As with the municipality, the map crosses the district line. The Ungheni bloc drew in the commune of Brătuleni from Nisporeni district; the Sculeni cluster draws in Taxobeni from Fălești. The reform, which also provides for consolidating the 32 districts into 10 regions, abolished in May the distance limit between the administrative centre and the localities attached to it, which makes such combinations possible.
The reform and the money
Consolidation rests on a threshold: a town hall would need at least 3,000 inhabitants to be considered viable, and the reform concept announces a development incentive of 3,000 lei for each inhabitant of the resulting unit. The formula in the Voluntary Amalgamation Methodology, however, has two terms: to the population multiplied by 3,000 lei is added a second term, which grows with the number of town halls in the group. For the four communes — 7,430 inhabitants on 1 January 2024 — the development incentive works out at 26,132,682 lei, by the newsroom’s calculation. With the preparation transfer (400,000 lei) and the support for local budgets (2,000,000 lei a year for three years), the package reaches 32,532,682 lei — precisely the order of magnitude of the “over 32 million” figure floated locally.
The calendar is tight. Voluntary-merger decisions must be approved by the end of July 2026; after that deadline, the reform enters its normative stage, with compulsory mergers after the 2027 local elections.
How voluntary
Like any material coming from the reform’s promoter, the Government’s video tells only one side. And the question the critics raise holds for Sculeni too. The Congress of Local Authorities of Moldova (CALM), which represents mayors, supports modernisation but rejects forced amalgamation and asks that, when a town hall is to disappear, the community decide through a local referendum. For the Sculeni cluster, the public documents speak of “talks with residents” and of the local council’s vote — not of a referendum. The Government’s own material — part of the “Strong Town Halls” campaign — frames the decision as the result of a population survey, a form of consultation, not a referendum.
It also remains to be seen which locality becomes the administrative centre of the new town hall, and how residents of Taxobeni, Cioropcani and Buciumeni will reach public services once their own town halls close.
What comes next
By the end of July, the local councils of the four communes must adopt the merger decisions for the union to be validated voluntarily. Triunghi will follow these decisions, alongside those in the municipality of Ungheni cluster and in the district’s other localities discussing consolidation.
This news item is based on the video material published by the Secretary General of the Government, Alexei Buzu (reproduced and quoted in the article), on local-press reports citing the Sculeni town hall regarding the process timeline, on the Concept of the Local Public Administration Reform, and on the 2024 census data. Population figures come from the National Bureau of Statistics. The incentive sums are calculated by the newsroom with the formulas in points 94, 114 and 121 of the Voluntary Amalgamation Methodology, approved by Government Decision No. 925/2023 (Monitorul Oficial No. 472-473 of 8 December 2023, art. 1155) and amended by Government Decision No. 269 of 27 May 2026, on the usually resident population published by the National Bureau of Statistics as of 1 January 2024 — 7,430 inhabitants for the four communes, the figure also recorded in the amalgamation decisions. The newsroom has not yet obtained the Sculeni local council’s decision in official form and has not identified a local referendum on the matter. Triunghi will return with the decisions of the local councils involved.
Correction — 5 August 2026
In the original version of this article we wrote that the incentive for the Sculeni cluster would amount to “over 22 million lei”, and we set down as unconfirmed the “over 32 million” figure floated locally. The first figure was wrong; the second was in fact close to the reality. The error is ours: we applied only the first part of the official formula.
The formula in point 114 of the Voluntary Amalgamation Methodology — approved by Government Decision No. 925/2023 and published in Monitorul Oficial No. 472-473 of 8 December 2023 — has two terms. The first is the population multiplied by 3,000 lei, the only one we applied. The second grows with the number of town halls in the group: for a group of four units, the multiplier is 6. For the four communes — 7,430 inhabitants, of whom 3,805 are in Sculeni — the second term adds 3,842,682 lei.
The development incentive therefore comes to 26,132,682 lei. With the preparation transfer (400,000 lei) and the support for local budgets (2,000,000 lei a year for three years), the package reaches 32,532,682 lei — the sum local sources had right, and which we could not account for at the time of publication. The passage has been corrected.
The population figure used in the calculation is the one in the National Bureau of Statistics data as of 1 January 2024 (7,430), also recorded in the amalgamation decisions; it differs slightly from the total of 7,377 obtained above from the 2024 census data by locality. We correct our mistakes in public.