The councils of Petrești and Todirești approved their merger on 31 August, the last day the government had announced for voluntary files. Of the district's 33 town halls, 32 now have a merger decision published in the state register.
On 4 August the Government said how much it gives per head for mayoralty mergers: 3,000 lei. That figure is only the first term of the real formula. Applied to Ungheni district, with the National Bureau of Statistics table by locality, the three incentives yield 276.7 million lei for the six amalgamation groups — 157.5 million for the group around the municipality alone. It also explains the figure of 278 million announced on 31 July by the head of the Ungheni Territorial Office. The press release does not mention that second term, and the largest part of the money is conditional on a law that has not yet been published.
The Government's stocktaking on 31 July: around 400 of the country's 890 mayoralties have adopted their final amalgamation decisions, and another 200 or so have until the end of August. In Ungheni district, five mayoralties did not have the decision published in the register.
The five amalgamation groups take in 27 of the 33 mayoralties in Ungheni district; six ended up outside them — three because they started a group of their own, one because it rejected the merger with reasons given. All the groups counted their population using 2024 figures — some 2,000 more people than there are today, with no effect on the legal threshold of 3,000 inhabitants.
The date of July 31, 2026, invoked publicly as the deadline for the “voluntary” amalgamation of communes, is “an operational term set by the State Chancellery” and is not expressly provided for by Law 225/2023 — an official reply from the Ungheni Territorial Office, addressed to our newsroom, shows. Missing it does not abolish the right to merge, but it takes the locality out of the current legislative package and moves it into normative amalgamation, top-down, mandatory for town halls under 3.000 residents. In Ungheni district, the test case remains Cornești: a decision the Office considers unlawful is set to reach the courts if it is not repealed.
The amalgamation consultation is coming down to residents' level. The Costuleni mayor's office — part of the largest commune proposed in the district, formed around Ungheni municipality, with around 42.300 residents — calls the village to the Cultural Center on Sunday, July 19, and has put into circulation the vision document of the new administrative unit. In parallel, the Cioropcani mayor's office, from the Sculeni cluster, has launched a bilingual online questionnaire on the draft decision and the development priorities. The council votes are scheduled by the end of the month.
Draft decision no. 7/1, published on the official platform particip.gov.md together with the consultation announcement, provides that the administrative centre of the future unit be Cornești town and that the name remain unchanged. Public hearings took place on July 16 and 17, in Cornești and Romanovca; recommendations are accepted until July 28 — through a form, by e-mail, by post or at the town hall's premises. The details of the process were confirmed by the town hall in an official reply sent to the newsroom.
The Cornești town hall has opened a public consultation on the draft decision for the amalgamation with Cornești village and Bumbăta village — recommendations are accepted until July 28, through an online form. The new perimeter clears the legal threshold of 3.000 residents by more than a thousand. The race is tight: the Government has announced that the voluntary phase closes on July 31, and the councils still have to vote on the final decision.
The Ungheni Territorial Office of the State Chancellery ordered the town of Cornești to repeal its decision to merge. The reason, taken from the document: the perimeter was unlawful — the town wanted to take the villages of Mircești and Poiana out of the commune of Boghenii Noi, and the law does not permit a commune to be dismembered. The arithmetic explains the haste: the town and the village of Cornești together have 2,820 inhabitants, 180 below the legal threshold of 3,000. The council repealed within five days — but at the same sitting it sent the villages to Parliament by another route and relaunched the merger, this time with Bumbăta. All three, 11 votes to nil.
