National Salvation Front (Romania)

The National Salvation Front (Romanian: Frontul Salvării Naționale, FSN) was the most important political organization formed during the Romanian Revolution in December 1989; it set up the interim governing body, the National Salvation Front Council of Romania, in the first weeks after the collapse of the communist regime. The FSN subsequently became a political party, the largest party in post-communist Romania, and won the 1990 election with 66% of the national vote. Ion Iliescu, co-leader of the FSN, won election as President of Romania with 85% of the vote.

Iliescu nominated the co-leader of the FSN, Petre Roman, who was serving as interim Prime Minister, as the Prime Minister of the first cabinet formed after Romania's first post-Ceaușescu free and fair elections. After the fourth mineriadă (September 1991), Roman was forced to resign on 1 October 1991. Tensions between Iliescu and Roman came to a head in April 1992, at the national congress of FSN, when the party split in two, forming the Democratic National Salvation Front (FDSN), led by President Iliescu; and FSN, led by Petre Roman (in 1993, the FSN was the renamed as the Democratic Party (PD).

The National Salvation Front (FSN) founded by Iliescu and Roman was the common root of two of the largest active political parties in post-communist Romania: the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Democratic Party (PD, later the Democratic Liberal Party, PDL, after the merger with a splinter group from PNL, the Liberal Democratic Party, PLD). In 2014, the second party (the former PD; then PDL) merged into the National Liberal Party (PNL).