USR returns with its favorite number, namely self-praise on Facebook. Dominic Fritz, president of USR and mayor of Timișoara, does not lead any ministry. But that has never stopped him from giving 10/10 grades to his party colleagues on a conveyor belt. This time, he posted a 100-day report full of round numbers, countless hectares, services, and factories, asking us to blindly believe that USR ministers saved Romania with "their hands tied." We are quite tired of their own self-praise.
USR counts figures, but doesn't explain where they come from
Fritz's text is built according to a simple recipe learned from generation to generation. Throw in three large numbers, stick them next to the name of a minister or a party member, and present them as proof of reform. 20,000 hectares reforested, 500,000 consular services, a factory back on its feet. But out of all these, nothing is explained that a real report should explain. It doesn't say what the situation was before, what the inherited legacy was, it doesn't say who started those respective projects or what part of the result belongs to a ministry and what part belongs to institutional processes that continue regardless of who sits in the chair.
"USR ministers delivered even with their hands tied." This is pure party propaganda, not a governance report, and anyone who reads with a clear mind, not just with the heart of a sympathizer, immediately sees the seam.
Fritz writes that when you do good work, results follow. Correct, but good results come with explanations, not with superlatives thrown on Facebook at lunchtime. A serious politician puts a reference year and an official source next to every figure. USR prefers the quick impression, the casual share, because it knows that most people will not verify anything.
USR boasts about a forest planted by someone else
Diana Buzoianu exceeded the PNRR target of 18,000 hectares, with over 20,000 reported. It sounds very nice, as if she actually did something. But who actually planted these trees and when? Diana Buzoianu? She isn't the icing on the cake.
Fritz says nothing about how many hectares were planted strictly during her mandate and how many were part of projects contracted years ago, ready to be finalized regardless of who was at the helm. Putting the entire figure on the shoulders of a single minister, when talking about a process that lasts years, is a cheap manipulation of the population.
And more seriously, no one asks what the survival rate of the plantations is. One hectare reported as reforested does not mean a living forest ten years from now. Saplings die, lands degrade, and without survival data, the figure of 20,000 hectares is just ink on paper, good for a viral post and completely useless for any sensible evaluation.
If USR actually had something to show, they would publish exactly these data. Or at least conduct an analysis of the forests already planted in Romania, to see what their survival rate was and especially what the maintenance conditions were. And then come with real figures. But we have become accustomed to the USR style. They don't publish them because they don't suit them. The legacy received from predecessors is more important if it is passed off under the name of USR.
Țoiu does the basic job of any minister and sells it as a revolution
The elimination of illegal taxes requested by intermediaries is correct, but it is the absolute minimum any Minister of Foreign Affairs must do; it is not some historic reform. Fritz intentionally confuses the repair of an old fraud with a structural change, because the former sounds like an obligation, the latter sounds like merit.
The figure of 500,000 consular services is presented as a personal trophy of Oana Țoiu. But how many services were there in previous years? How much of the growth is actually due to the current leadership and how much is due to the integrated electronic system, which has been operating at a national level since 2016 and was already processing large volumes of services long before Țoiu reached the ministry?
Fritz doesn't say, because the answer would ruin his whole story. You cannot take an inherited infrastructure, put the current minister's name on top of it, and sell it as proof of reform. USR members love to put their signature everywhere.
A signed contract does not produce a single cartridge
Fritz is becoming downright brazen. Radu Miruță and Irineu Darău are presented as heroes who put the Sadu factory back on its feet, with equipped halls and up-to-date salaries. However, the public statements of these same ministers constantly speak in the future tense. The plant will be re-technologized, is to enter production, negotiations with an American investor are still ongoing, and some of the contracts are merely submitted financing requests, not collected money and no ammunition produced.
Including Sadu in SAFE does matter; no one denies that. But there is a huge distance between being included in a program and having a factory relaunched, a distance that Fritz erases with a single sentence.
A contract is not a relaunched factory; everyone knows that. A clear promise is not production. And the image with trees grown in halls, however visually powerful, says nothing about the real status of today's work. If the factory were truly functional, we would see production figures, not just photos of empty halls prepared for an investment that may or may not come.
SAFE is not a USR party toy
The most brazen act in the entire report is the way Fritz treats the SAFE program as the personal invention of two boastful USR members. SAFE is a European mechanism through which Romania receives 16.68 million euros, the second largest allocation in the European Union after Poland. The preparation, negotiation, and implementation of this package involve the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Economy, the Prime Minister's Chancellery, and security institutions, not two people with active Facebook accounts.
Presenting the inclusion of a single factory in this massive mechanism as the personal merit of Miruță and Darău means erasing the work of dozens of state institutions, just to make it sound good in a post.
This is how any USR report actually looks. The same boastful and selfish conclusions, the same meaningless figures, the same total lack of logic between what is claimed and what can be verified. Fritz calls for a PNL-USR-UDMR minority government and supports his request exactly with the kind of manipulation he claims to combat in his adversaries.
Even those who still believe in USR (few, fewer and fewer) wonder why Dominic Fritz did not include the closure of the Cernavodă reactors in his boastful report. Isn't that also a USR "achievement"?