For over half a year, Romania has been plunged into political turmoil unseen since the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu în 1989. The first round of the 24 November 2024 presidential election saw first place go to Călin Georgescu, a far-right independent who peddled conspiracy theories, called Ukraine a “fictional state,” and praised the country’s pro-Nazi wartime dictator Ion Antonescu. Then on 6 December, two days before the second round was scheduled, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the election, alleging Russian meddling. A new election was scheduled for 4 May 2025 and Georgescu was blocked from running.
When the 4 May election finally came, these undemocratic moves backfired spectacularly. Georgescu’s “younger protégé,” George Simion, ended up winning that election with nearly double Georgescu’s original vote. This posed a serious danger that the far right would win the second round of the election.
By the time the second round of the elections came on 18 May, the tables had turned. Simion ended up losing 46.2% to 53.8% to Bucharest’s “centrist” mayor Nicușor Dan.
Many workers and oppressed are understandably breathing a sigh of relief to see the likes of Georgescu and Simion thwarted at a time when the far right is on the rise globally. Big business in Romania and throughout Europe are also breathing a sigh of relief to see a staunch supporter of NATO and the EU in power. But the underlying issues that triggered the crisis of the past six months haven’t been resolved. That will require independent action of the working class.
Why Was the Right Defeated?
It should be stressed that it wasn’t the maneuvers of the Constitutional Court that defeated the right. If anything, annulling the November election and blocking Georgescu from running strengthened the right. This is seen in the growth of the far-right vote from Georgescu’s 22.94% on 24 November to Simion’s 40.96% on 4 May.
The support for Georgescu and Simion stemmed in part from their anti-establishment image. Under the ruling National Coalition for Romania (CNR) government Romania saw the highest inflation rate of all EU states, as well as the highest income inequality. The Constitutional Court’s actions only reinforced the perception of Georgescu and Simion taking on a hated political establishment.
The shock of Georgescu and Simion’s victories, however, changed the balance of forces. Once the full scope of their racist, sexist, and xenophobic views came out, and the sheer size of their support, workers and the oppressed were pushed into action. Voter turnout shot up from 53.21% in the first round to 64.72% in the second, the highest turnout since 2000.
Simion’s own actions assisted in his defeat. His brand of far-right politics takes inspiration from Argentina’s Javier Milei, who has sought to “take a chainsaw” to public services. Leading up to the 18 May election, Simion advocated dismissing half a million public sector employees, in a country with a population under 19 million people. This damaged the pretense that Simion was genuinely standing up for the little guy.
Nicușor Dan, meanwhile, was able to benefit from his own outsider status. Like Georgescu, Dan ran as an independent on a campaign fueled by TikTok that railed against the corruption of the political establishment. This let him tap into the popular anger at the CNR government. At the same time, Dan shares the CNR’s pro-capitalist, pro-EU, pro-NATO politics, so the Romanian ruling class was willing to close ranks behind him.
It’s one thing to defeat the right in a single election, however. It’s another to provide a viable alternative for working people.
Dan Won’t Deliver
Following the election, Dan will be quickly put to the test. It will be harder for him to pose as an anti-establishment alternative to the discredited CNR government when he’s presiding over the same crisis and pushing the same policies.
Coming out of the election, Dan says his top priority is fixing the deficit — the highest in the EU — and he insists “the Romanian state is spending more than it can afford.” This will mean vicious austerity measures at the behest of the EU.
Dan’s insistence on aligning with the EU establishment and NATO’s massive military buildup will make the austerity worse. Even while he insists on keeping the budget in check, he’s promised to increase Romania’s defense spending to 3.5% of the country’s GDP. Even Barna Tánczos, the pro-NATO finance minister under the previous government, insisted that any increases above 2% would exceed the country’s budget capacity.
To do this, Dan is trying to form a government with the discredited parties of the CNR coalition. This will further erode his outsider status. Meanwhile, the largest party in the CNR, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), is considering declining participation in the government. This would allow the former ruling party to rebrand itself as an opposition on the “left.”
In opposition, it’s possible that the PSD could piece together its shattered reputation on the basis of disillusionment with Dan’s presidency. But right now the biggest opposition is still the far-right around Georgescu and Simion. Without a working-class political voice to challenge Dan’s austerity measures, the right will likely be the main beneficiary of any anger.
Working-Class Challenge Needed to Fight the Right
The shock successes of Georgescu and Simion are part of the global growth in the far right. The experience in other countries shows that establishment victories against the far right are fleeting. The deeper rot in capitalism that propels the far right to prominence continues and, when the establishment disappoints, the right will come back unless it is confronted by a genuine left working class challenge.
This is what happened in the U.S. when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 only for Trump to return to power in 2024. More recently, the Polish elections showed the same result. The far-right Law and Justice party was ousted in the 2023 general election. However, a week after Dan’s victory in Romania, Law and Justice candidate Karol Nawrocki won the Polish presidential election. This was in spite of Dan visiting Poland to campaign for Nawrocki’s opponent.
The far-right threat doesn’t just come in the form of electoral victories. We also have the 6 January 2021 insurrection in the U.S. and the 8 January 2023 coup attempt in Brazil. Simion has refused to accept the Romanian election results, and petitioned the Constitutional Court to annul the election on the basis of alleged election interference by the French and Moldovan governments. These allegations aren’t backed by evidence, but the undemocratic actions the Constitutional Court actually did carry out in December helped bolster popular support for the claims.
In December, Romanian authorities detained a group of 20 people, headed by the mercenary Horațiu Potra for trying to carry out an attempted 6 January-style insurrection, leaning on popular anger against the annulling of the first election. In a small impoverished country wedged between rival imperialist powers, coup threats like this are even more dangerous than in the U.S.
Taking on the far right requires building an independent working-class party that’s also able to fight the imperialist austerity measures of the political establishment. To succeed, such a party needs to resist any “lesser evil” pressure to join or support Dan’s austerity government in the name of stopping the far-right. And it would similarly have to resist blocking with discredited establishment parties like the PSD as an alternative. It would have to take a stand against the EU and NATO, as well as Putin’s aggression in the region. Beyond electoral activity, it would have to build the movements in the street that can take on the far-right threat as well as government austerity.
Taking a stand against NATO’s rearmament drive can point the way towards solving Romania’s economic crisis. But it will ultimately require linking up with struggles taking place internationally. Corruption, austerity, imperialism, and nationalist xenophobia are all baked into the capitalist system. Workers across the region must link up their struggles in a fight for international socialism.
