A ray of hope for Parliament

For years, the Parliament has been lagging behind in opinion polls when it comes to trust in the institution. And for years, there has been talk about the danger that this negative record generates for Romanian democracy. However, for some time now, warnings have begun to turn into reality, and from this perspective, 2024 and 2025 have provided a harsh picture of the consequences that can arise from the chronic lack of trust in the institution that should directly represent the interests and will of the citizens.

In the latest Barometer from Informat.ro – Inscop, the Parliament is starting to get closer to the threshold from which trust percentages can be counted on fingers, being rated with only 11.9% of much and very much trust, down from July 2025, when it was nearly 15%.

Beyond the increasingly serious deficit of trust in the Legislative compared to the total population, it is interesting to note that if we look at age categories, the lowest percentages are recorded among the population aged 45 – 60 years, and among respondents over 60 years old. That is, precisely among those who built post-revolutionary Romania, being of active age at the time of the Revolution, or who matured alongside it. Unfortunately, these population categories have gone from being the reservoir of the greatest hopes for Romanian democracy to looking with the greatest distrust at its fundamental institution.

However, there is also a ray of hope: their children and grandchildren do not view the Parliament with the same level of distrust. On the contrary, among the population aged 18 – 29 years, the trust percentage is over 3 times higher than among those over 45 years old.

In other words, the downward trend of trust in Parliament could be reversed, at least regarding the young population. How? Surveys do not provide actual solutions, but they can offer valuable clues for those seeking a way to save Romanian democracy.

Methodology: The data for the 7th edition of the BAROMETER from Informat.ro – INSCOP Research were collected between January 12-15, 2026. Research method: interview via questionnaire. The data were collected using the CATI method (telephone interviews), with a simple stratified sample volume of 1100 people, representative of significant socio-demographic categories (gender, age, occupation) for the non-institutionalized population of Romania, aged 18 and over. The maximum allowable error of the data is ± 3%, at a confidence level of 95%.