The Health, Education, Nature, Sustainability Party (

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language ***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language **Romanian cuisine, traditional ...

: ), commonly known by the abbreviation SENS (meaning "Sense", "Meaning", or "Direction" in Romanian), is an extra-parliamentary political party in Romania closely associated with progressive

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

MEP

Nicolae Ștefănuță Nicolae-Bogdănel Ștefănuță or Nicu Ștefănuță (born 3 January 1982) is a progressive Romanian politician who has been serving as a Member of the European Parliament since 2019. Political career In 2007, Ștefănuță was a member of the ...

. Amongst its most well known members are Florina Presadă and Ana Ciceală. As of the 2024 election, it is the biggest party not represented in

parliament In modern politics and history, a parliament is a legislative body of government. Generally, a modern parliament has three functions: Representation (politics), representing the Election#Suffrage, electorate, making laws, and overseeing ...

History

SENS was founded by current party president Andrei Macsut in 2023. The party won two seats in the 2024 local elections. The party successfully supported the candidacy of

to the

European Parliament The European Parliament (EP) is one of the two legislative bodies of the European Union and one of its seven institutions. Together with the Council of the European Union (known as the Council and informally as the Council of Ministers), it ...

. In September 2024, former senator and director of

LGBTQ rights Rights affecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people vary greatly by country or jurisdiction—encompassing everything from the legal recognition of same-sex marriage to the death penalty for homosexuality. Nota ...

organisation ACCEPT Florina Presadă and former Bucharest city councillor Ana Ciceală joined the party. After successfully collecting the required ten thousand signatures, SENS was able to compete in the 2024 parliamentary election. Despite being popular with the youth, the party only won 2.99% of the votes, less than the 5% required to gain representation. SENS also requested independent observation of the recount for the

presidential election A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President. Elections by country Albania The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public. Chile The p ...

Ideology and political positions

SENS is a centre-left progressive party and prioritises the protection of the environment,

social justice Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has of ...

, and

social inclusion Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the Euro ...

. SENS supports the introduction of same-sex civil unions, the systemic tackling of discrimination against the

Roma people {{Infobox ethnic group , group = Romani people , image = , image_caption = , flag = Roma flag.svg , flag_caption = Romani flag created in 1933 and accepted at the 1971 World Romani Congress , ...

, and the unconditional right to abortion. To combat climate change, SENS prioritises the decarbonisation of the Romanian energy system,

reforestation Reforestation is the practice of restoring previously existing forests and woodlands that have been destroyed or damaged. The prior forest destruction might have happened through deforestation, clearcutting or wildfires. Three important purpose ...

, and protection against

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

s and

flood A flood is an overflow of water (list of non-water floods, or rarely other fluids) that submerges land that is usually dry. In the sense of "flowing water", the word may also be applied to the inflow of the tide. Floods are of significant con ...

s. The party aims to modernise railroads, encourage eco-friendly public transport, and modernize the Henri Coanda Airport. With regards to health, the party supports the modernisation of hospitals, the ensured right to

abortion Abortion is the early termination of a pregnancy by removal or expulsion of an embryo or fetus. Abortions that occur without intervention are known as miscarriages or "spontaneous abortions", and occur in roughly 30–40% of all pregnan ...

in safe conditions, and coverage of

therapy A therapy or medical treatment is the attempted remediation of a health problem, usually following a medical diagnosis. Both words, ''treatment'' and ''therapy'', are often abbreviated tx, Tx, or Tx. As a rule, each therapy has indications a ...

by health insurance. Alongside REPER, SENS supports the

decriminalization Decriminalization or decriminalisation is the legislative process which removes prosecutions against an action so that the action remains illegal but has no criminal penalties or at most some civil fine. This reform is sometimes applied retroacti ...

of possession for the purpose of consumption of all psychoactive substances, opposing the Ciolacu cabinet on this issue. In an Instagram post on 7 October 2024, 1 year after the Hamas attack on Israel, SENS strongly condemned Israel's military actions in the Gaza Strip, which SENS considers not acts of war, but genocide against Palestinian civilians. On 22 May 2025, on the day of Romanian-Israeli solidarity, SENS condemned the placement of the

Israeli flag The flag of the State of Israel ( ; ) was adopted on 28 October 1948, five months after the Israeli Declaration of Independence. It consists of a white background with a blue Star of David in the centre and two horizontal blue stripes at the ...

on the on the building of the Romanian Parliament and organized a pro-Palestinian protest.

Analysis

Political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and Power (social and political), power, and the analysis of political activities, political philosophy, political thought, polit ...

Cristian Pîrvulescu estimated that SENS could obtain more than 5% in the 2024 election, mainly ex- USR voters. He thinks that, through this party, Nicu Ștefănuță is trying to prove to his colleagues in the European Parliament that environmental politics have a future in Romania. In the last week before the 2024 parliamentary elections, a trend was observed on

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

that misinformed voters about

Călin Georgescu Călin Georgescu (; born 26 March 1962) is a Romanian far-right politician and agronomist. He has long worked in the field of sustainable development, and served as President of the European Research Centre for the Club of Rome (2013–2015). G ...

, the winner of the first round of

presidential elections A presidential election is the election of any head of state whose official title is President. Elections by country Albania The president of Albania is elected by the Assembly of Albania who are elected by the Albanian public. Chile The ...

(later annulled by the CCR decision of 6 December 2024), that SENS would be the party he supported in the legislative elections. Several cases of votes for SENS from voters of Georgescu, fooled by disinformation on social networks, were reported. The SENS Party denied links to that disinformation campaign.

Election history

Legislative elections

Presidential elections

; Note: ¹

Independent candidate An independent politician or non-affiliated politician is a politician not affiliated with any political party or bureaucratic association. There are numerous reasons why someone may stand for office as an independent. Some politicians have polit ...

endorsed by DREPT, PMP, FD, REPER, RîA, PV, SENS, EMSZ, and factions of USR

References

{{Reflist Political parties in Romania 2023 establishments in Romania Green political parties Green political parties in Romania Palestinian solidarity movement in Europe Political parties established in 2023 Progressive parties Pro-European political parties Pro-European political parties in Romania Progressive parties in Romania