Dispatch from Bucharest: Why has Romanian politics suddenly gone sideways?
BUCHAREST—It’s never a good thing when presidential elections are annulled. But that’s just what happened in NATO and European Union (EU) member Romania earlier this month.
In Bucharest late last week, I saw firsthand how the Romanian political class is reeling from the sudden rise of Călin Georgescu. This is especially true among many pro-Western, liberal-minded Romanians. On November 24, Georgescu, a formally fringe mystic nationalist, earned the most votes in the first-round presidential election. Then, just before the second round runoff, the Romanian Constitutional Court announced that it was annulling the results of the first round. The court’s decision was based on declassified Romanian government assessments of foreign (Russian) election interference, including using the social media platform TikTok to promote Georgescu. US intelligence officials privately confirmed to me that the allegations are credible. Still, evidence of Russian interference in European and US elections is abundant. No country before Romania has cancelled a presidential election because of it.
By contrast, Romania’s parliamentary elections were held without incident on December 1. The parliamentary elections produced a strong result for the three centrist governing parties—the center-right liberals, the center-left social democrats, and the Hungarian minority party—plus a fourth liberal party. These four parties are now in negotiations to form a new coalition government. Political players I visited with in Bucharest told me that the coalition is likely to be announced before Christmas. The new government will then have to rerun the cancelled presidential election, likely early next year. Outgoing President Klaus Iohannis will probably remain in office until then.
In Romania, there is a widespread sense, accurate or not, that the establishment has been focused on itself.
The twin shocks—Georgescu’s rise and the annulment of the presidential election—have shaken the hitherto complacent centrists in Romania. While the accusations of Russian interference (and attempted sabotage) are plausible, given that the Kremlin engages in such activities throughout the West, Georgescu’s popularity is not simply a foreign import. That a man regarded as a fringe character even by fellow nationalists could rise within a few weeks from near obscurity to a leading contender for the presidency speaks to broad social dissatisfaction with the Romanian centrist parties, which have been trading control of the government back and forth for years.
My Romanian interlocutors expressed embarrassment, even shame, at the court’s annulment of the election, and they agreed that it set a terrible precedent for the country and the region. They also acknowledged that the centrist parties had lost touch with Romanian society and its cultural and economic dissatisfactions that, when spelled out, sounded similar to those of unhappy right-wing voters in Germany (particularly in the former East Germany), France, and to some degree the United States. In Romania, there is a widespread sense, accurate or not, that the establishment has been focused on itself, not on the problems faced by ordinary citizens, and that traditional national values and even national sovereignty were being lost.
More thoughtful liberals told me that Georgescu’s rise was, in effect, a protest vote against centrist complacency, not a vote for the candidate’s weird brand of nationalism and Romanian fascist nostalgia. The answer, they said, was for the incoming coalition to bring forward new faces, not the old ones who had lost credibility, for the posts of prime minister and president. But a shrewd leader of one of the nationalist parties was skeptical. There is no way, he said to me, that the centrist parties will put aside their own leaders in favor of a fresh team. That’s not their operating style, he insisted, predicting that they would go for the status quo leaders yet again.
Between their domestic politics, the Russian menace in neighboring Ukraine, and concerns about the direction of US foreign policy under the incoming Trump administration, most of the Romanians I spoke with were jittery. Nevertheless, they were focused on a way ahead to limit the damage of the annulled presidential election to Romania’s democracy. That way ahead is to rerun the presidential election in a fast, credible manner and quickly address the political discontent that had propelled Georgescu, they said. Some Romanian politicians I spoke with even seemed ready to consider bringing in fresh faces to head the next government.
This may be easier said than done. Whether Georgescu will be allowed to compete given various irregularities in his campaign, including his alleged claim to have spent no money at all on his campaign, is not clear. If he is not allowed to compete, the credibility of the rerun presidential election will be questioned within and without the country. If he is allowed to compete, he could win. In that case, a nationalist president and centrist government could rapidly find themselves at loggerheads. The resultant political paralysis could hamper governance, raising social frustrations still more.
The political tensions in Romania take place against a backdrop of a generation or more of overall successful transformation after decades of communist rule. Romania’s communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu was repressive and economically incompetent, even by communist standards. When Romanians overthrew his rule in swift (and violent) revolt in December 1989, it was one of the poorest countries in Soviet-dominated Europe. No longer. After a slow start, Romania’s free-market reforms kicked in. The country’s economy has quadrupled in size since 1989, and it has joined NATO and the EU. Even as the current political crisis took hold, Romania gained admission to the EU’s Schengen area, meaning free travel within the bloc. It was a big deal for Romanians, and everyone I spoke with in Bucharest regarded it as a major national achievement.
But success as seen from afar and in context does not seem enough to assuage Romanian voters. The political dissatisfaction common throughout Europe and the United States has hit Romania hard. The good news, as I reminded those with whom I spoke in Bucharest, is that Romania is part of the same political family as the rest of Europe and the United States. The bad news is that they share the same challenges and are struggling with them.
Many of Romania’s nationalists seem to believe that the incoming Trump administration will favor them. There have been some in the broader reaches of President-elect Donald Trump’s world who have sought out those they consider ideologically sympathetic. Indeed, Romanian media was filled with speculation that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., whom Trump has nominated to lead the US Department of Health and Human Services, had planned to visit Romania after the first-round presidential election essentially to promote Georgescu. (The trip did not take place, and the story may have been generated by Georgescu’s allies.) Whether the Trump administration will find Georgescu’s self-styled Romania First (pro-Russian, anti-Ukrainian, and anti-foreign investment) views useful is questionable: ideological compatibility may not translate into policy compatibility.
What happens next depends on the Romanians: Will the next government have new faces? When and how will the presidential election be rerun? And can the centrist Romanian parties learn from what is a near-miss political train wreck?
Daniel Fried is the Weiser Family distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council, former US ambassador to Poland, and former US assistant secretary of state for Europe.
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Image: A person walks near a Christmas market on Constitution Square by the Palace of Parliament, after the Romanian top court annulled the result of the first round of the presidential election, in Bucharest, Romania, December 6, 2024. REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki