Summary
Far-right populist Calin Georgescu led Romania’s presidential election with 22% of the vote, narrowly ahead of leftist Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu (21%), setting up a runoff on December 8.
Georgescu’s unexpected rise, driven by anti-establishment sentiment, has disrupted the political landscape.
His vague populist platform includes boosting local production and criticizing NATO. Analysts suggest his surge reflects voter dissatisfaction, with some suspecting potential Russian influence.
The election, marked by moderate turnout (52.4%), occurs amid economic challenges, high inflation, and tensions from Romania’s proximity to Ukraine’s war zone.
It would be preferable for Europe overall for Romania to be, say, not as corrupt, and consequently not as poor. It’d make Europe stronger. I am very much in favour of seeing Romania make huge strides in those kinds of regards.
But that’s a long-term thing, for the simple reason that Romania has neither the unity nor vision for huge steps as e.g. the Baltics took. That’s just me extrapolating the trajectory you’re currently on: Short-term Romania will be, comparatively, corrupt and poor and whether it’s currently taking one step back or two steps forwards has limited impact on, well, everything. We’re not going to lose sleep over it. If you are losing sleep over it, become a politician, rally your countrymen.
We’re going to cheer from the sidelines but Europe isn’t an empire, we won’t be ruling your country for you. And if you try to pull a Hungary we’ll extort the Romanian powers that be just like we did with Orban. As in, they will be running the country without EU funds.
Noone’s ignoring the east when it comes to the Russia question any more. As to decoupling the French are pretty busy getting everyone on board with it. Have you asked them whether they could share some nukes with you? That kind of thing would help stuff along. What doesn’t really help things along is buying F35s from the Yanks.
Also have you noticed that we’re both taking a not exactly pro-NATO stance here. It’s going to take a while before there’s a clear division between populism serving the “yeah Atlanticism really was a bad idea” vs. “Europe should be run from Moscow” lines, it’s too early for that, dust will have to settle first. Currently populists are still able to serve both positions simultaneously by being a bit fuzzy about their positions, what positions they actually hold, well, with populists you never know.
Oh, agreed. And much as the EU has taken that position fairly actively, that’s ultimately an issue of internal Romanian politics and why it’s worth being at least vaguely aware of what they look like, at least around elections.
I’m not even sure that I’m not taking an atlanticist position here. At this point in the game I’m not even sure what that means anymore, because for the second time in a decade we’re in a scenario where the US isn’t “atlanticist” as a matter of policy. I don’t take issue with a defense pact among the surviving liberal democracies, it’s just hard to visualize what that looks like if the US is not on the list.
Short term it looks a lot like the EU, assuming their liberal and social democracies hold up. Longer term I have no idea. A larger thing involving parts of Asia and South America but not the US and Israel? I certainly hope that set of alignments isn’t put to the test militarily, but who the hell even knows anymore.
Oh, and for the record, I am not Romanian myself and, at least as far as civil society goes, I’d dispute that the East isn’t being ignored, beyond using Orban as a culture wars icon.