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 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the test case remains Cornești: a decision the Office considers unlawful is set to reach the courts if it is not repealed.
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 The council repealed within five days — but at the same sitting it sent the villages to Parliament by another route and relaunched the merger, this time with Bumbăta.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.
The Sculeni Communal Council has formally launched the draft decision on the voluntary merger of the communes of Sculeni, Cioropcani and Buciumeni (Ungheni district) with Taxobeni (Fălești district). Residents' proposals are being collected between June 23 and July 8, by e-mail or at the town hall, and the notice is posted on the national platform particip.gov.md. It is, however, only an early transparency step — the full draft and the public consultations themselves come later.
On 24 June, the mayors of the ten localities that want to form a single municipality around Ungheni signed a framework agreement with SALAR International — the Swedish organisation running the «PACE Local» project in Moldova with Sida funding. The support, worth up to about 80,000 euros by City Hall's estimate, is to cover the new municipality's development strategy, one-stop service offices and energy audits for the schools in Semeni, Unțești and Brătuleni. But the agreement comes before the vote that will actually decide whether the merger happens.
The project under which the commune of Măcărești would merge with the municipality of Ungheni did not gather the required votes in the Communal Council on 16 June — even though, a few days earlier, a citizens' assembly had approved it. At the request of a group of councillors, the mayor convened an extraordinary session for 22 June, with a single item on the agenda. It is the first visible blockage in the cluster of localities the municipality of Ungheni is gathering around itself.
Alongside the municipality of Ungheni, a second bloc is taking shape in the district: the commune of Sculeni is merging with Cioropcani, Buciumeni and with Taxobeni — a commune from the neighbouring district of Fălești. The Secretary General of the Government, Alexei Buzu, promoted the merger in a video; the decisive votes are expected by the end of July.
