What is PSD? | PSD Full Form | PSD Term

The Social Democratic Party (Romanian: Partidul Social Democrat, PSD) is the largest political party in Romania. It is also the largest social democratic political party in the country. It was founded by Ion Iliescu, Romania’s first democratically elected president at the 1990 Romanian general election. It is currently part of the National Coalition for Romania (CNR), which is a big tent grand coalition comprising also the National Liberal Party (PNL). The CNR formerly included the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR/RMDSZ) until mid June 2023.
It is a member of the Progressive Alliance (PA), which was founded in 2013, Socialist International (SI), and the Party of European Socialists (PES). As of 2015, the PSD had 530,000 members.
PSD traces its origins to the Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN), a leftist breakaway group established in 1992 from the centre-left National Salvation Front (FSN) established after 1989. In 1993, this merged with three other parties to become the Party of Social Democracy in Romania (Romanian: Partidul Democrației Sociale in România, PDSR), also translated as the Social Democracy Party of Romania. The present name was adopted after a merger with the smaller Romanian Social Democratic Party (PSDR) in 2001.
Since its formation, it has always been one of the two dominant parties of the country. The PDSR governed Romania from 1992 to 1996, while the PSDR was a junior coalition partner between 1996 and 2000. The merged PSD was the senior party in the coalitions governing from 2000 to 2004, and from March 2014 to November 2015, as well as one of the main coalition partners between December 2008 and October 2009 (with the Democratic Liberal Party, PDL) and again between May 2012 and March 2014 (as part of the Social Liberal Union, USL). PSD left government after former prime minister, Victor Ponta resigned in November 2015, only for PSD to return as the senior governing party in January 2017, shortly after it achieved a major victory in the 2016 Romanian legislative election. The party remained in power at governmental level until 2019, before being voted down in the parliament and then endorsing a PNL minority government between 2019 and 2020. Subsequently, it entered opposition between 2020 and 2021, before eventually returning to government within the CNR coalition in late 2021.
Party founder Ion Iliescu is the only PSD candidate to become President of Romania, he served in office from the 1989 to 1996, and again from 2000 to 2004.
Currently, PSD remains the largest party in the Parliament of Romania with initially 36 seats in the Senate of Romania and 86 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (as obtained at the 2024 Romanian legislative election), it also has the largest number of mayors, as well as the second largest number of local and county councillors and county presidents (after PNL), remaining the biggest and most influential political force in the country to the present day.