Union Day

January 24 remembers the 1859 union of Moldavia and Wallachia, often called the Little Union. The two principalities elected Alexandru Ioan Cuza as ruler in both places, a bold constitutional manoeuvre that created the political core of modern Romania.

The achievement did not complete the national story later associated with 1918, but it gave that story an institutional beginning. Cuza’s government went on to pursue reforms in administration, education, land and the army. Public ceremonies today often include Hora Unirii, the circle dance whose name makes unity visible as something people do together.

Union Day recalls a constitutional solution reached in 1859 after the Crimean War and the Paris Convention. Electors in Moldavia chose Alexandru Ioan Cuza on 5 January under the calendar then in use, and Wallachian electors chose the same man in Bucharest on 24 January. The double election created a personal union that international powers had not explicitly designed, and the institutions of the two principalities were subsequently consolidated. Romania distinguishes this ‘Little Union’ from the Great Union commemorated on December 1. January 24 became a statutory non-working holiday in 2016; public memory remains particularly strong in Iași, Cuza’s Moldavian capital, and in Bucharest, where the second election completed the political act.