“The operation was successful, but the patient died”: Romania, the EU and the far right
Carmen Rafanell, Florentin Cassonnet, Réalité (in French), 30 May 2025
Critic Atac (in Romanian), 5 June 2025
This dialogue between Costi Rogozanu, Florin Poenaru and Enikő Vincze aims to investigate recent transformations in Romania’s political scene, in the context of the profound socio-economic changes the country is undergoing. Between integration into the European Union, massive labour migration, the lasting effects of the transition to a market economy and the rise of far-right populism, Romania appears to be a political laboratory of the present. Starting from the most recent elections, this dialogue offers useful insights into the economic, territorial and ideological fractures that run through contemporary Romanian society.
This interview, conducted by Carmen Rafanell (French geographer) and Florentin Cassonnet (French journalist), was published in French on the Réalité website.
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Enikő Vincze is a sociologist at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. Her research focuses on housing, urban development and the transformations of capitalism. Enikő is a housing rights activist involved in the association Căși sociale acum! (Social Housing Now!).
Florin Poenaru holds a PhD in social anthropology and is a professor at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work in Bucharest University. His work addresses issues of class, post-socialist transition, theories of history and the social effects of climate change. He is one of the animators of the CriticAtac platform.
Costi Rogozanu is an essayist, literary critic and Romanian language teacher at a high school in Focșani. He edited the anthology Iluzia anticomunismului (The Illusion of Anti-Communism, 2008) and is a columnist for the newspaper Libertatea.
Question: The rise of Călin Georgescu and George Simion seems to mark a significant reconfiguration of Romania’s political landscape, historically dominated by the PSD–PNL bipartisan structure. This system’s electoral geography was commonly read as a divide between rural areas and working-class populations, seen as leaning toward the “left” (PSD), and urban, more educated and affluent sectors, inclined toward the liberal right (PNL). This oversimplified framework, however, is now being challenged by the emergence of new political actors such as the Save Romania Union (USR) and the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR). Do you consider that class dynamics still shape recent political developments in Romania? And/or territorial divisions?
Enikő Vincze: Today’s political crisis is manifested in the massive erosion of public trust in traditional parties such as the PSD and PNL, which, through their roles in parliament, government, and the presidency over the last three decades, have overseen the transformation of state socialism into capitalism and contributed to the crises produced by the neoliberalization of economic and social policy in Romania. This is a crisis of the political system that enabled the formation and consolidation of a capitalist economy in Romania, which, in integrating with global capitalism, has undergone—and continues to undergo—the cyclical crises inherent to the system. It remains affected by the disjuncture between the economic and the social in the unequal Europe (Vincze, May 2020), and, more recently, by the agony of neoliberalism (Vincze, December 2024).
In light of the performance of these parties, the dominant classes may be dissatisfied that they did not complete the dismantling of all state-owned enterprises and the social protection system, or that they did not go far enough in privatizing healthcare, public education, the pension system, or the energy sector. They most naturally align with the position of USR and its candidate Nicușor Dan. However, given AUR’s overt courtship of Romanian entrepreneurs, we might expect that some of them—especially the aspirational petty bourgeoisie within the dominant classes—may prefer this party.
For their part, working-class people across different occupational and income segments are justifiably outraged by the fact that every crisis produced by capitalism since 1990 has been “solved” in ways that laid the groundwork for a new crisis. And each time, these solutions have disproportionately harmed them. Even though the minimum wage has increased slowly over time, it remains—just as it is now (2450 lei net)—below the threshold of the minimum decent consumption basket (currently 4000 lei per person). The average wage, too, fails to ensure a decent life, especially in cities like Cluj, where average incomes exceed the national median, but where renters or homeowners with mortgages spend over 40% of their income on housing alone—excluding the high costs of electricity and gas (on the intersection of housing and labor struggles, see the 2024 campaign report Public Housing for Workers).
And yet, many middle-class voters in these conditions support Nicușor Dan—either because they see him as the “lesser evil” compared to Simion, or because they have internalized liberal norms suggesting that one must work ever harder to “earn” a home in expensive cities, or because they have not yet found suitable civic or political alliances through which to voice their discontent.
Geographically, many former PSD voters in rural and small-town areas appear to be shifting toward AUR. After decades of voting for the Social Democrats with no improvement in their economic condition, and faced with a political field polarized between a liberal right and a nationalist far right, they are left with no genuine alternative. But AUR supporters are also found in large cities. Except for Cluj-Napoca, regional cities like Iași, Brașov, and Timișoara—as well as Bucharest—saw Simion place second behind Dan in the first round, with approximately 24–27% of the total vote. Clearly, a majority of voters wanted something outside the political establishment, and both candidates performed the role of “anti-system” saviors—with full consideration for capital and financial markets.
Florin Poenaru: From the perspective of the second-round results, which confirmed Nicușor Dan’s victory, it appears that no real political reconfiguration has occurred. It is worth noting that in the 2024 European and local elections, AUR scored modestly. In the annulled first round of the presidential elections, Simion came in fourth. In the parliamentary elections, however, AUR became the country’s second-largest party, winning 18% or 1.6 million votes. The party’s rise is primarily linked to how the state handled the Covid-19 pandemic. Public dissatisfaction with the government’s chaotic policies—policies that ultimately favored companies tied to international capital over those owned by domestic capital—acted as a unifying force for disparate social groups: from small business owners in the hospitality sector and their precarious employees, to migrants forcibly returned by European employers and treated as public threats by Romanian authorities, to neo-Legionary, neo-Protestant, and Orthodox groups asserting their ideological distance (if not outright opposition) to the state, as well as various social strata long alienated from the traditional parties of the post-socialist transition.
This was the starting point. AUR’s growth accelerated with the internal shifts in the PSD after the arrest of its former leader, Liviu Dragnea, and especially after the party entered government with PNL at President Iohannis’s request. Under the pressure of these developments, PSD’s support plummeted from 45% to 20%. AUR benefited most from this erosion. But it wasn’t just a matter of shifting percentages. More significantly, for local capitalists, PSD no longer guaranteed representation of their interests—a role it had implicitly played since the days of Ion Iliescu. The party also lost much of its rural base after 2015, when its leadership became increasingly petit bourgeois, drawn from provincial elites more interested in affirming their status as pro-European urban notables than in maintaining ties with the party’s traditional demographic base.
Another important factor in the PSD’s decline and AUR’s rise was the former’s inability to manage its internal ultra-conservative, ultra-nationalist, and ultra-Orthodox currents—always present among its electorate and leadership. These tendencies were absorbed by AUR, which did not try to marginalize them but instead offered a noisy platform for their expression.
As for Călin Georgescu, I argued from the outset that he was not the product of an organic grassroots movement that propelled him to an unexpected first-round victory. Without backstage maneuvering by the traditional parties—whose influence is only partially visible—Georgescu would have remained a marginal online figure. That said, his discourse was unmistakably neo-Legionary, sprinkled with second-hand Ceaușist protectionism from the debt repayment years, and heavily influenced by film and pop-cultural references. But seeing him as the mastermind of a fascist movement on the verge of seizing state power with Russian support is a leap of imagination—one ironically taken by the authorities themselves when they annulled the elections.
Georgescu’s emergence did not reveal Romania’s fascist undercurrents—these were long visible, both underground and in plain sight, often tolerated or endorsed by state institutions. When CNSAS commemorates the “martyrs” of the communist prisons or the Romanian Academy pays tribute to the “saints of the prisons,” no charismatic leader is needed to bring fascism into the mainstream—it is already there.
Paradoxically, it was the annulment of the elections and Georgescu’s double martyrdom (first through the annulment, then the rejection of his candidacy and indictment for high treason) that transformed him into a symbolic leader of a broad anti-system movement, particularly among the diaspora and marginalized domestic communities who have long lacked meaningful political representation. The superficial and contingent nature of his support was apparent when his disqualification for the re-run elections sparked no major public protests.
Ultimately, political reconfiguration today is less about the emergence of new grassroots forces than about the terminal crises of the two long-dominant parties, PSD and PNL, after 35 years of post-socialist transition.
Costi Rogozanu: The class dimension becomes visible when we examine closely the evolution of Romania’s elites over the past decade. The political class no longer earns money as it did under the fully deregulated capitalism of the 1990s and early 2000s. Politicians have professionalized. Today, wealth and status come primarily through the management of European Union funds. Most politicians launched after 2010 speak in a hybrid language combining NGO rhetoric with financial jargon. This shift has driven a major realignment of traditional parties toward Nicușor Dan.
On the other side, small and medium entrepreneurs—particularly in real estate, tourism services, and retail—have historically profited through practices of tax evasion and informal labor. These actors largely mobilized behind Georgescu-Simion, not because they are nostalgic for communism (far from it), but for the 1990s—a time when anything seemed possible and untaxed. The subtext of the Georgescu-Simion message was precisely this: “we will be free” effectively meant “we won’t be burdened by regulations when doing business.” This was Romanian Trumpism at its core.
This message also appealed to a segment of upper-middle-class beneficiaries of pensions and other rents—those who perceive patriotism as opposition to any form of social contribution, which they see as an imposition from Brussels.
The most obvious analytical mistake is to view the rural population and agricultural workers as they were 50 years ago. Today, Romania’s rural and small-town areas are marked by extreme inequality. In each of these areas, a handful of local entrepreneurs make substantial profits from agriculture or commerce—and most lean toward the far right simply because they seek full control over their remaining employees and want minimal taxation. While multinationals have “legalized” tax avoidance through complex optimization strategies, small and medium capital cannot do the same. They depend on a “patriotic” state that will partner with them.
Question: A brief step back: what was Romania’s position within the division of labor in the Eastern Bloc during the communist period? How did this position change after the collapse of the bloc, and particularly during the process of European integration? Do USR and AUR – even vaguely – advance any economic policy proposals in relation to these structural transformations?
Enikő Vincze: One specific feature of Romania under state socialism was its partial neutrality toward the USSR, pursued from 1965 onward under the banner of de-Stalinization. In the 1970s, this translated into political and economic openness toward the West. As a result, between 1975 and 1988, Romania benefited from the U.S. Most Favored Nation clause, including preferential tariffs and low-interest loans.
In the 1980s, Romania stood out for its desire to disengage from IMF influence, despite having been a member since 1972. In 1984, the Romanian leadership rejected the final installment of its 1980 stand-by agreement and moved to repay the country’s foreign debt rapidly, even ahead of schedule. While Hungary and Poland began to introduce reforms within state socialism—such as legalizing private enterprises and loosening state-society relations—and the USSR expanded enterprise autonomy and initiated political reforms, Romania imposed harsh austerity measures. These included drastic cuts in food and energy consumption, massive export increases to service debt, and intensified repression against any criticism of the regime.
After the dismantling of state socialism, most Romanians—those who lost jobs due to privatizations, bankruptcies, and plant closures—continued to experience austerity, now under capitalism. Unlike Hungary or Poland, however, Romania’s privatization process was slower. The first two countries were praised by the European Commission and joined the EU in 2004, while Romania was kept on a longer waiting list. EU accession fostered intense competition among former socialist countries, which had previously cooperated under the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (CMEA) until 1991.
After 1990, the need for external loans—due to the dismantling of the socialist financial system and transnational cooperation structures like the CMEA—and uneven territorial development created favorable conditions for the EU’s eastward expansion. This expansion amounted to a spatial extension of the legal and regulatory frameworks of the EU founding states, to be implemented by the candidate countries’ own institutions. These were tasked with creating conditions attractive to foreign investors seeking cheap labor, raw materials, and new markets.
Still, (as Georgescu, 2021 shows) in 2019 the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Romania amounted to just 40% of GDP, compared to an EU-27 average of 57%. Yet the top 100 foreign-capital companies (mostly from Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and the US) generated turnover almost five times greater than Romania’s top 100 domestically owned firms. Between 2018 and 2023, Romania ranked second after Poland among emerging European countries in FDI inflows (Emerging Europe, 2024).
AUR’s “solution” to this situation of economic and political dependency is to support Romanian entrepreneurs and restore national dignity. USR’s “solution,” on the other hand, is to suppress public discontent to restore political stability, a precondition for continued foreign investment. Both parties converge in advocating budget cuts in public administration and beyond, as well as in supporting increased military spending. As EU member state obligations dictate, both parties will be required to implement the legacy of the National Coalition for Romania (PSD, PNL, UDMR):
(1) The 2025–2031 medium-term structural budget plan, drafted in response to the European Commission’s demand to reduce public debt below 60% of GDP (Romania’s public debt rose from 49% at the end of 2023 to 54.3% by end-2024) and to bring the deficit under 3% of GDP (it stood at 9.5% in late 2024), to be addressed via fiscal consolidation over the next 4–7 years.
(2) The CSAT decision from April 2025, mandating the Minister of National Defence to participate in negotiations ahead of the June 2025 NATO summit, committing to the European ReArmEurope/Readiness 2030 program, which foresees raising military spending to 3.5% of GDP and securing new military loans and other provisions.
Florin Poenaru: Neither AUR, nor USR, nor any other party has an economic program that accounts for Romania’s current position within the European economy. Since 2007, Romania has been subordinately integrated into the German export economy, which is now facing a deep crisis. This is likely to produce significant repercussions for Romania as well—yet no political party appears prepared for the coming structural downturn. For now, all eyes are on deficit reduction.
Enikő Vincze has already offered a more detailed answer to the original question. Regarding Romanian socialism, I would just add that it took a very different path compared to other countries in the Soviet orbit, notably by repaying its external debt. This move aimed to break with the global financial system and abandon dollar-based transactions. For a country with a non-convertible currency, acquiring dollars required either exporting goods to international markets or borrowing. To borrow a Romanian saying—expressing trust in the healthcare system—the operation was a success, but the patient died. The debt was paid, but the economy and society collapsed. This particular historical trajectory should inform how we understand both the socialist period and its aftermath.
Costi Rogozanu: USR and AUR should be seen as representing a relationship between intermediaries and beneficiaries. And increasingly, the intermediaries are in control—sometimes more powerful than the actual businesspeople. USR is a party built on a new stratum—not so much corporate as European bureaucratic. Its entire leadership is composed of individuals who made their fortunes by consulting on EU funds (Ghinea being the best known among them). AUR, on the other hand, has been largely supported by local entrepreneurs who are falling behind. The pandemic accelerated capital concentration. Small capitalists are losing ground for multiple reasons: caught between the tax authority (ANAF) and suffocating regulations, while also facing increasingly aggressive competition from multinationals.
USR and the broader right-wing bloc promise that politicians will act as pro-business bureaucrats, especially for large corporations eager to deepen their access to public funds. AUR, by contrast, wants to redirect public money toward small businesses. It’s the difference between a global real estate fund and a small contractor building a block of flats with informal labor. Each party broadcasts its message accordingly. AUR’s now-famous project offering “homes for €35,000” speaks directly to local contractors hoping to access national infrastructure spending. Nicușor Dan’s anti-corruption rhetoric ultimately signals a second wave of “cleansing” the business environment of “primitive” local entrepreneurs—this time in favor of big capital. There are no “good guys” in this game.
Question: It is often said that Romania is an exception in Central and Eastern Europe when it comes to the late rise of the far right. Even though the strong performance of the Greater Romania Party in the 2000 elections is frequently overlooked, it is true that the far right significantly weakened throughout the 2000s, until its re-emergence during the pandemic. How do you explain the absence of an earlier far-right surge in Romania, in contrast with neighboring countries such as Poland or Hungary? And how do you account for the speed with which this rise occurred?
Enikő Vincze: The rise of the far right in the form of AUR is a response to the economic crises produced by capitalism and a state captured by capital, governed successively by PNȚCD, PSD, PNL, PD/PDL, PMP, UDMR, USR, and USRPLUS—and to the absence of a socialist alternative to this system. Over two decades earlier, the Greater Romania Party performed well in the 2000 elections, which marked the end of the dramatic transition decade during which, as today, material discontent had accumulated. That party, along with PUNR, channeled economic grievances into nationalist mobilization. Vadim Tudor’s party held power in Cluj-Napoca throughout the 1990s and until 2005; in a multiethnic context, working-class voters responded positively to its nationalist moderation.
I believe that the rise of Romanian nationalism after the bloody interethnic conflict in Târgu Mureș in March 1990 was contained in part by UDMR’s participation in government alongside the Democratic Convention (CDR) from 1996 to 2000 and its continued role in coalition governments thereafter. Despite its center-right political alignment—often in partnership with the PNL and PD, and its affiliation with the European People’s Party alongside PMP—UDMR has nonetheless conveyed to both the Hungarian minority and the Romanian majority that peaceful Romanian-Hungarian coexistence, while marked by historical nationalism on both sides, is indeed possible.
AUR was founded in 2019 and gained significant strength during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the government’s vaccination campaign and restrictive measures provoked widespread discontent—including among marginalized Roma communities, who became targets of an increasingly repressive state (Vincze, April 2020). The government’s economic recovery policies were also criticized by many (Vincze, May 2020). AUR leader George Simion was among the “Noii Golani” protesters against Iliescu’s social-democrats in 2006, and through the “Action 2012” campaign advocating for “Bessarabia is Romanian Land,” he responded to austerity through nationalism. I would argue that the emergence of such a party was delayed by the fact that, in Romania, conservative forces existed across both the right-wing and social-democratic left-wing spectrum.
Florin Poenaru: The idea that Romania is an exception in Eastern Europe when it comes to the rise of the far right is a myth. While it is true that no specific party previously channeled such forces, these tendencies have long existed across the political spectrum—in parties like the PSD and PNL, within society through anti-communism and the glorification of the interwar period, and among mainstream public intellectuals (who often promote either historical or contemporary iterations of far-right discourse). They have also been present in institutions such as the Romanian Academy, in various media outlets and TV stations, at book fairs in downtown Bucharest, and in publicly funded cultural-artistic events organized by local elites.
To this must be added a significant layer of far-right extremism maintained and disseminated by the Romanian Orthodox Church at all levels. Throughout the post-socialist transition, the ideological climate was saturated with a discourse that, while not reviving the overt mystical nihilism of the original Iron Guard, promoted “the traditional values of the Romanian peasant”—a set of invented traditions deployed as a rhetorical shield against modernity, secularism, reason, and science—core elements rejected by classical fascism and Nazism. AUR (and Georgescu) emerged from this backdrop, merely mobilizing these tropes in a time of crisis.
Costi Rogozanu: The far right in Romania has long remained culturally and religiously isolated, yet it was generously funded through state subsidies. This wasn’t marginalization; it was patronage. Unlike Poland or Hungary—very different cases in themselves—Romania did not develop a far-right discourse with broader European resonance. However, the impact of Trump should not be underestimated; it played a crucial role in the globalization and universalization of ultraconservative language.
The discourse of “cultural resistance” against woke ideology and what is perceived as “cultural Brussels-ism” has emerged on both fronts: through intellectuals supporting Nicușor Dan and through the eclectic religious–New Age mix represented by Georgescu. The influence of American far-right NGOs and neo-Protestant religious organizations should not be underestimated either. Through campaigns like the “Coalition for the Family” and the 2018 referendum, these actors effectively aligned with ultraconservative factions within the Romanian Orthodox Church.
Question: In recent years, Romania’s traditional party system has been significantly disrupted by a wave of anti-corruption mobilization, widely endorsed by Western liberal democracies. It was from this context that the two candidates who faced off in the second round—George Simion and Nicușor Dan—emerged. What role did the anti-corruption movement play in reshaping Romania’s political system and weakening the traditional parties?
Enikő Vincze: The anti-corruption mobilization from 2015 to 2019 was, in essence, an anti-PSD mobilization. So too was Uniți Salvăm Bucureștiul, as well as USR’s campaign “No Convicted Politicians in Public Office,” which brought the party into Parliament in 2016. All of these were reinforced by the anti-corruption climate fostered by Băsescu and Kövesi’s actions through the DNA. Clearly, none of these initiatives were civic or political movements concerned with critically engaging the social and economic problems generated by capitalism. More than that, this type of civic and political mobilization constituted a specific stage of anti-communism, drawing on the existing condemnation of communism produced by Băsescu’s commission and Tăriceanu’s institute in 2005–2006. It thus served as a key element in the ongoing justification and refinement of the so-called “victories” of capitalism in Romania.
This mobilization brought together Băsescu and Boc’s PDL (increasingly right-wing after the split with PSD/PDSR/FDSN) and the newly formed party, USR. Although USR emerged from anti-corporate movements such as Uniți Salvăm Bucureștiul and the Save Roșia Montană campaign, shortly after its formation it revealed its anti-PSD orientation through the #rezist protests and the so-called “revolution of our generation,” which in turn enabled Iohannis to sharpen his own anti-PSD rhetoric.
In both parties, the anti-corruption discourse targeted the state itself, legitimizing its ongoing withdrawal from the provision of public goods and services—this after privatization had already dismantled public ownership of the means of production and transformed the remaining state-owned companies into corporate structures.
As for Dan and Simion, though one was focused on saving Bucharest’s urban heritage and the other on a nationalist agenda of unifying Bessarabia with Romania, both are products of anti-communist civil society. This civil society is not content with mere anti-PSDism—even though PSD, a nominal center-left party, actively contributed to Romania’s neoliberal transformation. In their view, PSD still represents the “communist past” and supports “those who don’t work.” Beyond their anti-PSDism, Dan and Simion are cast as heroes of generalized anti-communism, contributing—as does the entire right-wing civil society—to the delegitimization of any socialist alternative to capitalism.
In the current electoral confrontation between Simion and Dan, the antifascist mobilization against Simion, bolstered by the pro-European rhetoric of Dan’s supporters, seems to be playing a role similar to that played by anti-corruption a few years ago: legitimizing the capitalist status quo. Unfortunately, antifascism—at least in its liberal formulation and practice—is being deployed as an anti-socialist tool, readily equating fascism and communism. In doing so, it conceals the fact that the far right and fascism are products of capitalism, co-produced and mutually reinforcing, and partners in suppressing socialist alternatives to capitalism.
Upon winning the long presidential campaign, Nicușor Dan declared: “There is a community that lost today’s election, that is outraged by how politics has been conducted in Romania, so outraged that it believes the solution now is revolution. It is our duty to convince them that the solution is reform of the justice system and the country’s administration, so that Romania can move forward.” We don’t know how he defines “revolution,” but he clearly expressed fear that popular dissatisfaction had reached an explosive point. Nor do we know how the new government plans to convince the public that administrative reform is the solution to their grievances. The challenge of revolution remains with us—but it must be redirected, not toward the nationalist far right. The 2024/2025 elections have shown how far behind we are and how urgently we need the development of a strong, internationalist, socialist, antifascist, and anti-militarist political pole.
Florin Poenaru: The anti-corruption movement was a political project launched during President Băsescu’s first term, aimed at weakening his political competitors—primarily local capital holders who, through their economic power, also had political representation in parties and the state. It had little to do with actual dismantling of corruption, understood as the removal of neo-patrimonial networks from public institutions. On the contrary, particularly at the local level, the anti-corruption campaign reinforced such networks, as those in power preferred to surround themselves with loyal individuals bound by mutual dependency.
At the national level, the campaign had two long-term detrimental effects. First, it decimated the leadership structures of traditional parties (especially the PSD), plunging them into a profound crisis of leadership. Every PSD president after Adrian Năstase rose to power because their predecessor had been removed under anti-corruption pressure. As a result, internal political and ideological contests were replaced by backstage maneuvers to determine who would inherit power after the prior leader was ousted due to corruption charges. This process led to a deprofessionalization of party politics and a pattern of negative selection, leaving parties severely weakened. PSD’s trajectory, as the party most affected by the anti-corruption campaign, is emblematic.
Second, the campaign hyper-politicized the judiciary. Prosecutors working on anti-corruption became de facto political actors. The justice system itself was not only politicized but militarized, with intelligence and security institutions like the SRI stepping into the arena. This gave rise to what has misleadingly been called the “deep state.” In reality, this involved the consolidation and internal autonomy of power poles within the state, operating beyond democratic and political accountability, but with the capacity to decisively intervene in politics and institutional life.
Faced with this expanding, opaque power bloc—enabled by its secrecy and the generous state funding it received—most politicians chose to accommodate rather than confront it. Under the guise of national security, anti-corruption became a tool for this bloc to shape political leadership. Only politicians who pledged not to challenge its authority could rise. Nicușor Dan exemplifies this pattern, as did Klaus Iohannis, who—according to the movement’s own definitions—could well have been classified as a corrupt politician.
In a certain sense, the anti-corruption campaign succeeded due to tacit social support. The profound distrust toward politicians (amplified by the campaign itself) and especially toward the state, meant that there was little organized resistance to it. Instead, it dovetailed with neoliberal ideology, which calls for a diminished and privatized state. If politicians are corrupt and the state dysfunctional because of corruption, then privatization appears as the rational solution.
It is no surprise, then, that massive street opposition emerged against Liviu Dragnea’s proposed judicial reforms—he, too, ultimately became a political casualty of the anti-corruption project. The main political beneficiary was USR—although only up to a point. When party president Dan Barna ran for president and appeared to challenge Iohannis’s authority, the anti-corruption machine turned against him as well, pushing him out of politics.
AUR also exploited this distrust toward politicians and their illicit wealth. It deployed anti-corruption rhetoric against the entire political class, positioning itself as a vehicle for systemic renewal. In practice, however, this was far from the case: AUR was full of figures with murky pasts in traditional parties—some of whom had left under a cloud of corruption allegations. By portraying the political class as structurally corrupt, AUR attracted substantial anti-system votes—without ever questioning the system’s foundations. It was a campaign strategy borrowed from Traian Băsescu and adapted to the post-pandemic political landscape.
Costi Rogozanu: Anti-corruption was, at its core, a struggle against a local system exhibiting tendencies toward oligarchization. While Traian Băsescu appeared to have political opponents, he in fact targeted a trio of highly influential oligarchs: Dinu Patriciu, Sorin Ovidiu Vântu, and Dan Voiculescu. The latter, after serving time in prison, now finds himself in the pro-European camp—his teeth dulled, far less combative than in the 2000s.
As a collateral effect, the anti-corruption campaign effectively contributed to the minimization of the state and the erosion of social services. Its real consequence was to displace corruption from a zone where it was strongly backed politically—mainly via the PSD—into a more diffuse, cross-party and mediated domain. Politicians and local businessmen (often one and the same) were defeated, making room for a new political figure: the lobbyist-intermediary, weaker and more transactional. In practice, the resistance of local business to global capital was neutralized in this process.
Nicușor Dan now revives this worn-out slogan, but in the context of a new, anti-partisan phase that is particularly dangerous. The technocratic fantasy of hollowing out parties and replacing them with depoliticized governance structures is not fundamentally different from Georgist aspirations.
Question: Many eyes in Europe have been turned towards Romania, with the country being perceived by some as a “laboratory of the European future,” particularly in light of the cancellation of the December elections—a first in EU history. What are the regional and European implications of the current developments in Romania?
Enikő Vincze: What is happening now in Romania is not entirely unique in comparison to broader global developments—even though the annulment of the December 2024 elections was an unprecedented event that shocked political circles across the spectrum. Rather than focus on its exceptionalism, I would point to the ways in which local and national dynamics intersect with global processes. In the phenomenon of AUR, for instance, we see the convergence of several trends observable worldwide: a fusion of nationalism, neoliberalism, and state interventionism in a moment of crisis within neoliberal capitalism.
In Romania, Simion represents a revival of the nationalism of the 1990s—a reheated ideology that emerged from the crises accompanying the destruction of socialist economic structures and the formation of a market economy. Today, we are again confronting a wave of crisis generated by the contradictions of contemporary capitalism, and Simion responds with the same promises once made by Vadim Tudor or Gheorghe Funar: the rebirth of the Romanian people. This narrative now draws on the demand for dignity, allegedly stolen during the pandemic through mandatory vaccinations and mobility restrictions, but also more broadly by the victors of liberal democracy and foreign investors. The political effect of this discourse mirrors that of the 1990s: class inequality is erased in the image of a unified, Orthodox Romanian nation, and popular anger is redirected toward national and sexual minorities.
The nationalist parties of the 1990s, however, could do little—assuming they even wanted to—to stop privatizations or the massive inflow of foreign direct investment that enabled the formation of capitalism in Romania. At the time, they had no international allies. Today, Simion, as a Member of the European Parliament, enjoys the support of the European Conservatives and Reformists group and looks to Giorgia Meloni as a political model. Her party is now the fourth-largest in the European Parliament, with 78 MEPs. Romania’s far-right nationalist parties also share affinities with the Patriots for Europe group (home to Viktor Orbán’s and Marine Le Pen’s representatives among others), and with the smaller but influential Europe of Sovereign Nations grouping, dominated by Germany’s AfD.
In this new moment of crisis—marked by rising budget deficits and government debt—Simion also recycles classical neoliberalism, particularly as represented by the PD-L under Băsescu and Boc in the late 2000s and early 2010s. That was Romania’s first EU-era crisis, unfolding in a country increasingly integrated into global capitalism. At the time, government policy followed European Commission recommendations: pro-capital austerity (cutting wages and pensions), state reform (reducing investment in health and education), discrediting the welfare state and those who rely on it, and attracting foreign capital as the nation’s salvation. These policies were later consolidated through Romania’s integration into global financial markets, welcoming foreign investors and financial instruments.
Today, Simion operates under a new wave of fiscal discipline imposed by the European Commission. Swept up at this moment and in line with the governing coalition’s ongoing commitment to cutting public sector jobs, he declared during the runoff phase of his campaign that he would lay off 500,000 state employees. His platform also promises tax cuts for both employees and employers, and reductions in pension and health insurance contributions.
A third trend—pre-dating Simion but continued by him through his nationalist proposal to fund Romanian entrepreneurs with public money as a counterweight to foreign capital—is state interventionism. This was practiced most aggressively by Florin Cîțu’s government (a PNL–USRPlus coalition), which, during 2020–2021, reduced the role of the state to that of a rescuer of pandemic-impacted businesses (Vincze 2021a, 2021b). These measures aligned with the European Commission’s temporary easing of fiscal constraints, resulting in increased deficits and national debt—a trend later intensified by the National Coalition for Romania through energy subsidies during the energy crisis and continued increases in military spending.
Florin Poenaru: There is a compelling theory that post-socialist Eastern Europe served as a kind of avant-garde for developments that would later emerge in Western Europe and the United States. According to this theory, for instance, Viktor Orbán prefigured both the populist nationalist wave in Europe and the rise of Donald Trump. I believe this theory has its merits, as it highlights how the brutal neoliberal experiments carried out on the post-communist periphery generated political transformations that have only recently arrived in the West, where resistance to neoliberal erosion had historically been more robust. That is no longer the case. From this perspective, I believe the Romanian precedent may well be replicated in future Western contexts. The current political situation in France already seems to reflect this.
On the subject of the anti-corruption campaign mentioned earlier, it is worth adding another key feature of Eastern European politics that may soon become relevant in the West as well. For a long time, in the East, losing an election did not simply mean political defeat—it often meant the end of one’s career and even the risk of imprisonment. Figures such as Adrian Năstase and Liviu Dragnea are emblematic in this regard.
Costi Rogozanu: Eastern Europe now stands as the arrière-garde, not the avant-garde. Romania’s signals reflect a posture of compliance with the new geopolitical realignments underway in Europe. The country serves as a sensitive gauge of the EU’s structural fragility. The European Union’s contradictory messaging on the Ukraine–Russia crisis reverberates across its peripheries—and Romania amplifies that incoherence. The dominant signal is one of pessimism: Romanian politicians are effectively pleading for external coordination. Even the so-called sovereigntists demand nothing more than a clear line of command—ideally issued by Trump. What we are witnessing is a peculiar nostalgia for the days when Brussels or Washington charted an unambiguous course. To borrow from sovereigntist satire: “Give us a master, we’re suffocating.”
Question: Romania’s accession to the European Union dramatically accelerated the migration of Romanian workers to Western Europe. Today, Romanians constitute one of the largest migrant populations on the continent. Yet this European apparatus for managing labor mobility on a regional scale appears to be reaching its political and social limits. In the most recent electoral cycle, the Romanian diaspora voted overwhelmingly for Simion, the candidate of the far-right AUR (as well as for Georgescu, in November). How do you interpret this phenomenon? What political role do Romanians living and working abroad play, given that they represent approximately 10% of the electorate and can decisively shape electoral outcomes?
Enikő Vincze: The large-scale unemployment generated by the gradual closure of most formerly state-owned factories—privatized by the mid-2000s—was rendered largely invisible by the surge in transnational migration enabled first by open borders and later by Romania’s accession to the EU (Vincze, 2023). A 2024 assessment captured this dynamic succinctly: “According to Eurostat’s 2019 report, working-age Romanian citizens residing in the EU accounted for roughly one-fifth of the national population—by far the largest national cohort among the EU’s mobile citizens.” Implicit in this framing is the assumption that mobility is inherently beneficial. And indeed, mobility can be enabling—but only if we interrogate who becomes mobile, under what constraints, for what kinds of jobs, with what protections, and at what cost: fractured families, precarity, and exposure to exploitative labor regimes.
Eurostat data on mobile EU citizens of working age confirms that Romania’s situation is highly atypical in the European context: in 2020, nearly 20% of the country’s population aged 20–64 was engaged in transnational migration, up from around 12% in 2010. These rates far exceed the EU average, which hovered below 5%, with only a slight increase between 2010 and 2020. The data also shows that transnational migration from Romania persisted beyond the hardship of the 1990s and continued even through later periods of economic stabilization and growth. Without these systemic flows, Romania’s risk-of-poverty and risk-of-poverty-and-social-exclusion rates would likely have been even higher—for example, in 2007 (31.5% and 47%), in 2020 (27.8% and 35.6%), and in 2022 (25.4% and 34.4%).
The continued increase in Romanian economic emigration also illustrates one of the dimensions of dependent development. On the one hand, large segments of the population become reliant on precarious jobs and living conditions abroad, often marked by insecure legal status. In 2019, 23.3% of Romanian immigrants worked in Germany, 17% in the UK, 15.7% in Italy, 11.2% in Spain, and 3.1% in Austria—countries that, to varying degrees, benefited from access to a vulnerable and low-wage labor force. On the other hand, this dependency also manifests at the national level, through reliance on remittances sent back by workers abroad. In 2021, diaspora remittances amounted to 3.2% of Romania’s GDP, ranking the country third in the EU by remittance-to-GDP ratio. In 2023, Romanians in the EU sent home €3.6 billion—the same amount Romania is set to receive for education under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Newsweek, December 2024).
Beyond their economic significance, Romanian citizens abroad who have retained voting rights also hold growing political power. According to data reported by Wall-Street.ro, in 2009, only 147,754 Romanians abroad voted (not only from the EU). In December 2009, Traian Băsescu narrowly won reelection, and the diaspora vote was seen as decisive. By 2019, over 944,000 Romanians abroad had voted—98.3% of them for Klaus Iohannis, while the PSD candidate received less than 2%. Diaspora votes then accounted for almost 10% of the national total. At the time, the diaspora was celebrated by many who now reject it. On May 8, 2025, diaspora turnout was even higher: 973,129 voters, of whom 61% backed George Simion, 25.45% Nicușor Dan, and around 7% the PSD–PNL–UDMR coalition candidate. In the second round on May 18, diaspora turnout rose to 1.6 million, with strong mobilization on both sides—though Simion maintained a slight edge (55.86%). This marked another defeat for Romania’s traditional parties, widely perceived as responsible for the hardships endured by emigrants, regardless of class.
Florin Poenaru: Precisely because it represents 10% of the electorate, the Romanian diaspora does not play as decisive an electoral role as is often claimed—its influence may be more symbolic than substantial. Elections are won or lost domestically, not abroad. Diaspora voters were celebrated when their ballots helped bring right-wing presidents like Traian Băsescu or Klaus Iohannis to power. But when their vote deviated from that script and shifted toward AUR, they were demonized.
A broader discussion is overdue regarding the evolution of the Romanian diaspora over the past 35 years. We are now speaking of two generations of emigrants, which introduces a new level of complexity. Here, I limit myself to two points:
- The COVID-19 pandemic played a crucial role in intensifying anti-state and anti-political-class sentiment among diaspora communities—sentiments that were already present. Many experienced humiliation: they were rapidly sent home from Western Europe without benefits and stigmatized as virus carriers upon returning to Romania, where they were subjected to degrading treatment. These experiences radicalized existing resentments and pushed the diaspora toward anti-system discourse. AUR capitalized on this shift and mobilized it electorally to its advantage.
- The situation of the diaspora in Western Europe has changed dramatically over the past five years compared to a decade or more ago. Their incomes have stagnated or declined, their purchasing power has been eroded by European inflation and rising prices in Romania, including salary increases in certain domestic sectors. The financial edge once conferred by working abroad has diminished. Ten to fifteen years ago, diaspora returnees visiting their hometowns during holidays were seen as financially successful and able to assume the role of a local petty bourgeoisie. Today, that class aspiration is increasingly difficult to sustain. Moreover, although these migrants live and work in major Western cities (or more often in their peri-urban zones), they lack both the financial and symbolic access to Romania’s major urban centers—Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara. This has created a deep cultural and social rift, visible in the “civil war of insults” on TikTok between Simion and Dan supporters during the runoff campaign.
The political and electoral dynamics of the diaspora will be worth watching closely, especially since the 2025 elections demonstrated that participation levels are much higher than previously assumed. Finally, a separate discussion is warranted on the so-called “Moldovan diaspora”—citizens of the Republic of Moldova who also hold Romanian citizenship and are therefore eligible to vote in Romanian elections. Traian Băsescu relaxed citizenship criteria for Moldovan residents to expand his political base—a goal he successfully achieved. Yet this political maneuver has produced an anomaly in Romanian electoral representation that remains largely unspoken.
Costi Rogozanu: The Romanian diaspora has revealed the European crisis it is currently experiencing. The UK’s exit from the EU, large-scale relocations to Germany, declining or stagnating wages, and the deterioration of working conditions have rendered the hardships of exile increasingly futile. The diaspora’s message is clear: “we want to return home.” What we must understand is that, for many Romanians, working abroad no longer offers the same opportunities it once did.
This disillusionment is driven both by bottom-up pressure—new waves of migrants willing to work for even less—and by the fact that Western Europe never intended to integrate these workers, but merely to exploit them under sterile, extractive conditions. The segment of the diaspora engaged in seasonal, physically demanding labor—the so-called “commuting diaspora”—expressed the strongest support for Georgescu. Their message is unmistakable: we once saw escape to the West as a solution, but that option is now closing. Where can we flee once even this alternative disappears?
We should not ignore the appeal of Georgescu’s message of “returning home,” which resonated deeply with these communities
Question: Romanians have often been perceived as strongly pro-Western, supportive of European integration and NATO membership. In light of recent electoral results, a growing discourse in the West suggests a “cooling” of Romania’s relationship with the European Union—as if the vote signals a disillusionment with, or a break from, a supposed European idyll. To what extent can the far-right’s electoral victory be interpreted as a form of popular critique, expressed through the ballot box, of the EU’s role in shaping Romania’s recent economic and social transformations?
Enikő Vincze: Romania’s accession to the European Union was conceived as a national salvation project. To comprehend this, one must recall the austerity of the 1980s, which not only diminished the economic prosperity that had seemed promising in the 1970s but also progressively eroded civil and political rights. Subsequently, the 1990s crisis—marked by privatization, price liberalization, factory closures, and job losses—further destabilized the nation. EU accession rekindled hopes for a Western European-style welfare state, promising economic prosperity alongside civil liberties.
However, Romania’s current “pro-European discourse” aligns with the neoliberal framework established by the 1993 Maastricht Treaty. This neoliberal union has been characterized by the political dominance of the European People’s Party in the European Parliament and Commission, and the implementation of economic objectives such as the common market, free capital movement, capital market union, public support for investment funds, economic and investment union promoting private capital in the arms industry, banking union with monetary policy control, and fiscal discipline—excluding military spending. Conversely, the “sovereigntist discourse” envisions the EU as a union of nations, reminiscent of the pre-Maastricht European Economic Community, emphasizing free movement of goods.
Neither discourse prioritizes the realization of a social European Union grounded in post-World War II values: equality, solidarity, liberty, and peace. Both presidential candidates in the May 2025 elections are anti-communist, advocate for militarization, and support significant reductions in public social spending. The distinction lies in one favoring foreign capital support, while the other promotes domestic capital.
Since the EU’s formal establishment in 1993, it has increasingly facilitated a neoliberal capital accumulation regime, emphasizing privatization, liberalization, deregulation favoring capital, and reduced state investment in public goods and services. Post-COVID-19, the European Commission has explicitly acknowledged the state’s role in rescuing private property-based economies and creating new capital investment opportunities. Decades of implementing these economic principles have inevitably led to public discontent over low wages and pensions, rising living costs—including housing and energy—and diminished access to quality healthcare and education, particularly among the most impoverished facing social and territorial exclusion.
While the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) gained strength by voicing opposition to mandatory COVID-19 vaccination and movement restrictions, this was merely one facet of broader capitalist transformations over recent decades that have impoverished, indebted, and dispossessed many Romanians. The most precarious dissenters and local entrepreneurs are distancing themselves from political power centers—represented domestically by PSD and PNL, and at the European level by institutions dominated by the EPP and S&D. The more affluent, disillusioned with PSD, continue to uphold liberal values, favoring USR or the United Right Alliance over PNL, and support the EU’s economic and military direction under the EPP, seeking more decisive implementation in Romania, hence the anticipation for a premier like Bolojan. Thus, individuals across various social classes and worker segments gravitate towards the current alternatives in Romania: Simion or Dan. This reflects a political revolution executed through liberal democratic mechanisms—namely, voting—but occurring in a political context devoid of a socialist left.
Both candidates acknowledge the deep divisions within Romanian society. However, they propose healing this polarization through new moral values: “honesty” for Dan and “respect” for Simion. Rooted in their respective ideologies, neither can admit that social division is intrinsic to a class-based society, stemming from the exploitation by dominant classes owning production means over those compelled to sell their labor, rent housing, or incur debt. Social division also arises from a state captured by capital, legislating and governing not for public interest but for capital’s benefit. Additionally, territorial disparities are inherent in capitalism’s uneven development, wherein capital seeks underdeveloped areas for investment during overaccumulation phases and withdraws when profitability wanes, necessitating a state that facilitates this oscillation without regulating capital movement in favor of labor, and mitigating investment risks by politically supporting sectors like the military industry.
Florin Poenaru: There was no far-right insurrection in Romania. Incidentally, the European far right is, in fact, strongly pro-EU and highly internationalized (see also its ties with the MAGA movement via Steve Bannon). The European Parliament has served as a far more visible and vocal platform for far-right parties than national legislatures. Accusations that the Romanian far right is isolationist or seeking EU exit thus fail to grasp the concrete reality. These elections have once again demonstrated that Romanians relate to the EU almost as to a religion, with the vote becoming a ritual reaffirmation of this allegiance. EU flags quickly filled Bucharest and other major cities as soon as Nicușor Dan’s victory was announced. Romanians remain the most pro-European of Europeans, displaying a deep resistance to any form of rational critique of the EU. This is a local expression—dating back to 1848—of the desire to signal belonging to a higher civilization, whether one descends from wealthy boyars or forgotten feudal peasants. This desire to affirm civilizational belonging through EU adherence transcends both class and political orientation. In these elections, both the neoliberal right and the self-proclaimed left marched under the EU flag, symbolically or literally. Both urban corporate professionals—who spend the equivalent of an average pension in a weekend—and average pensioners voted “for Europe.” The specter of Russia continues to hold sway in Romania, with anti-Russian sentiment deeply embedded in the historical formation of the Romanian nation-state. Moreover, anti-Russianism is typically combined with anti-communism to produce a powerful pro-EU mobilizing cocktail—as was the case in Nicușor Dan’s electoral success.
Costi Rogozanu: Let me answer with a story. In a poor village, a European-style school was built—with modern toilets and all. The beginning was chaotic. One hundred and twenty children were confronted with toilets they didn’t know how to use. The teachers had to conduct intensive lessons on flushing and handwashing. In some parts of Romania, the EU landed like a beautiful UFO that only served to highlight existing social inequalities. Some layers of society are so deeply marginalized that no amount of stylish school furniture can lift them up. There is a certain resentment towards European funding, which often appears to be nothing more than a façade covering over deep social precarity.
Question: Finally, it becomes apparent that the EU is now willing to support positions that are questionable from the standpoint of democratic liberalism, all in the name of “stability,” to preserve the process of capitalist accumulation—as we see in the Balkans, with the backing of Vučić’s regime in Serbia and Edi Rama’s in Albania. Do you think the European Commission’s support for the cancellation of Romania’s presidential elections could be interpreted in a similar light?
Enikő Vincze: The annulment of the presidential elections after the first round in November of last year—where an independent candidate with an anti-EU and anti-NATO platform secured nearly 23% of the vote compared to the 19% won by the second-place candidate—was undoubtedly welcomed by the European Commission.
The EC does not want another pole of patriots or sovereigntists emerging in Eastern Europe, but nor is it economically compelled to make the kinds of concessions it has made in Serbia or Albania, since it maintains control over Romania through the institutional mechanisms of EU membership.
Simion, however, represents a somewhat different case from Georgescu, as he is affiliated with the European parliamentary group shaped by the politics and personality of Giorgia Meloni—herself successfully integrated into mainstream EU decision-making.
So yes, the policy of capitalist nation-states and supranational institutions is to support capital accumulation. The ways in which they pursue this goal, however, depend on the specificities of historical conjunctures, geographies, and international relations.
Florin Poenaru: Not necessarily—because the influence of the European Commission in Romania is significantly greater than in the other countries mentioned. The Commission was directly involved in annulling the elections and subsequently backing that decision, as it had a direct stake in who would become the next Romanian president.
In other words, two types of actors sought to shape the outcome. At the supranational level, this included EU institutions, particularly the Commission and the Council. No one in Brussels wants another Viktor Orbán capable of dissenting from or blocking the Commission’s agenda. As such, the European Commission had a vested interest in annulling the first round of elections, in which none of the candidates offered guarantees of stability—Georgescu due to his overt discourse, Lasconi due to her lack of predictability and political experience.
At the infra-state level, the actors most concerned with the outcome were those whose institutional or political survival depends on it: heads of intelligence services, Constitutional Court judges, magistrates, ambassadors, and others. It is both understandable and expected that they would attempt, from within their institutional roles, to help secure a president aligned with their interests. This appears to have taken place during both the annulled first round and the second round, even if empirical evidence remains hard to come by.
Question: The war in Ukraine has had a significant impact on the political landscape and triggered important shifts within Romanian society. What contradictions or tensions do you think this conflict has exposed in the Romanian context?
Enikő Vincze: I would frame this issue in terms of the intensification of the global arms race, a key feature of the post-neoliberal era in which new regimes of capital accumulation are being forged—an arena in which Romania is actively involved. While linked to the war in Ukraine, militarization predates it, as I argued in texts from the pandemic period (Vincze, June 2020). In 2020, under President Iohannis, Romania signed a $4 billion agreement with the U.S. to purchase seven Patriot missile systems, followed in 2024 by a $180 million acquisition of missiles for F-18 fighter jets.
Since the launch of the European Commission’s ReArm Europe program in 2025—soon rebranded as Readiness 2030—it became evident that public and private investment in the military-industrial complex has been positioned as a central pillar of the EU’s economic recovery and reindustrialization agenda (Vincze, February 2025 and March 2025). Both leading presidential candidates support militarization: Simion favors rearmament but rejects continued military support to Ukraine; Dan, aligned with Brussels, has pledged to increase defense spending to 3.5% of GDP.
This occurs against the backdrop of a European return to strict fiscal discipline under the Stability and Growth Pact—except for military expenditures, which the Commission now exempts from deficit calculations. Yet if deficit increases above 3% are considered economically unsound, it follows that rising military spending—regardless of how it’s accounted—poses serious macroeconomic risks. This contradiction is papered over and presented as inevitable, in service of private capital’s profitability, as arms producers stand to benefit from increased demand driven by a politics of war masked as preparation for peace.
Unsurprisingly, these policies generate tension. Many oppose directing public funds toward military buildup, yet voicing such dissent is quickly labeled as unpatriotic or pro-Russian. The manufacturing of pro-militarization consensus relies on heightened Russophobia and exaggerated threats posed to Europe’s eastern periphery. This despite the fact that even mainstream defense platforms acknowledge that Russia lacks the capacity to project force beyond Ukraine (defense.ro, May 2025).
Moreover, debates—both formal and informal—continue regarding Romania’s role in the war. While some advocate greater involvement, others argue for a diplomatic path toward sustainable peace, rather than further escalation through weapons and multi-national troop deployments in what has already become a proxy war. Romania’s ongoing role has included the donation of a Patriot missile system to Ukraine—necessitating a new purchase from the U.S.—while diplomatic pressure from France, the UK, and other EU powers has pushed for broader Romanian engagement.
For the private sector, involvement in military and reconstruction efforts offers lucrative prospects. Participation in the “coalition of the willing” not only aligns Romania with NATO and EU priorities but may also serve as a prerequisite for inclusion in future reconstruction contracts in Ukraine—yet another case of disaster capitalism converting war into capital.
Florin Poenaru: As Enikő rightly points out above, the main transformation brought about by the war in Ukraine has been the growing militarization of public space and state functioning. From rising defense budgets and the classification of Romania’s involvement in the war, to key decisions being made within the CSAT—a non-transparent forum inaccessible to the voting public—and the flood of retired military generals called upon to offer interpretations of the new reality, the war has rapidly accelerated the transformation of society into a military barracks, complete with its own rules and ideology. Dissenting voices have been accused of collaboration with the enemy—that is, Russia—and have been symbolically or literally excluded from the national body as traitors. The militarization of society, initiated during the pandemic, has continued unchallenged in wartime.
Yet the war also produced an opposite effect with electoral implications in favor of AUR. Non-transparent arrangements at the Commission level aimed at aiding Ukraine negatively impacted the material interests of certain Romanian class segments, such as farmers and grain exporters, who mobilized against Ukrainian interests. Similarly, nationalist actors long engaged in cultural skirmishes with the Ukrainian state in regions inhabited by ethnic Romanians found an opportunity to bring their grievances to the fore. The undermining of national interests for Ukraine’s benefit—such as the widening of the Bystroye Canal or congestion at the Port of Constanța—fueled nationalist movements like AUR. Images of Ukrainian civilians—usually men—being conscripted from the streets or returning in coffins heightened Romanian public anxiety about the risks of war, strengthening a subterranean but popular anti-war sentiment opposed to the government’s assertive militarist rhetoric around aiding Ukraine. This sentiment played a key role in shaping an anti-system vote.
Additionally, in regions such as Tulcea, Constanța, and Bucharest, Romanians came into contact with Ukrainian refugees. Since these refugees often held a higher class position than the local population, this disparity was processed culturally and reinterpreted as hostility: they were framed as uncivilized, arrogant, or inferior. The proverbial (and entirely invented) Romanian hospitality was sorely tested, giving rise to a swift rejection—fueled by false or exaggerated information, such as claims that Ukrainian children received ten times the child allowances of local residents—which acquired electoral significance. Someone should one day write an ethnographic study on this, documenting also how members of Romania’s middle class manipulated the state by filing false declarations about the number and duration of Ukrainian refugees they hosted in rental properties.
Costi Rogozanu: The war in Ukraine has prompted a new awareness: that we are part of NATO, that we have partners such as the United States, with whom we’ve previously engaged in wars that once felt distant—wars that devastated other parts of the world without affecting us directly. Now, people realize that war could arrive on their doorstep. At the same time, the servility of Romania’s political elites toward European directives has suddenly become obscene. Beyond this, I have little to add to what my colleagues have already said above.
Photo: The electoral map of the 18 May 2025 second round of the presidential elections in Romania (source: Critic Atac)
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