The following article is an analysis of the upcoming second round of the 2025 Romanian presidential elections and the socio-economic effects it could have on the European continent.

The presidential elections are happening again in Romania, after the result of the regular electoral cycle was annulled by the Constitutional Court in December, an unprecedented event. While the initial threat of Călin Georgescu as an independent president aiming to take the country out of NATO and the European Union and destabilize the region may have passed, the scourge of simmering hatred, bigotry and anti-democratic sentiments he gave voice to are now openly disseminated.

Just like Donald Trump and especially Elon Musk in the United States, Georgescu was the wild card that shifted the Overton window from dog whistles to openly fascist propaganda and mystical conspiracist ideology, resurrecting the ghosts of Romania’s Nazi past with public gatherings celebrating them as heroes and martyrs. 

The second round of elections takes place Sunday, May 18, in a runoff between George Simion — the far-right AUR Alliance, or Alliance for the Union of Romanians — and former Bucharest mayor, and independent liberal technocrat candidate Nicușor Dan. The world is watching with bated breath as the ex-Eastern Bloc country, strategically positioned in Southeast Europe and bordering both the Black Sea and Ukraine, now stands at a major crossroads. Romania’s choice of a new leader could not only determine the fate of the country but potentially all of Europe.

While nationalism, right-wing extremism and neo-nazism have been trending upward globally over the past decade, it’s worth exploring what circumstances in Romania created the perfect breeding ground for these extreme ideas to gain traction. In order to trace what led to this current predicament we need to go back 35 years.

See our 2021 report: Bucharest Pride Under Siege

The Fall of Communism and Rise of Capitalism in Romania

In December 1989, a series of worker-led protests converged into what would be the first televised revolution. After 45 years under Soviet rule, Romanians were finally taking control of their country from a series of increasingly despotic heads of state. Nicolae Ceaușescu, whose reign was the longest and also the most extreme, transformed Romania into one of the most authoritarian countries in the Eastern Bloc. His predecessor Gheorghe Gheorgiu-Dej was praised for the swift and massive urbanization that he implemented in the ‘60s in the predominantly agrarian country. In contrast, Ceaușescu was responsible for some of the most restrictive and outlandish measures in the ‘80s, in what would be known as a Golden Age. 

The period was defined by the rise of the dictator’s cult of personality, presumably sparked by a visit to North Korea. The program included commissioning extravagant parades in Ceaușescu’s honor while imposing an extreme series of austerity measures including rationing of food, gas and electricity in order to pay back the country’s foreign debt, with people waiting in line for hours for essential foods and thousands of people freezing to death in their homes each winter. Abortions and contraceptives were also fully banned.

However, housing was relatively cheap and easily available; alongside free healthcare, education and childcare and job security, this created an overall sense of stability. Despite the many horrors of the era, people have an overall positive opinion towards this period. 

After the revolution and throughout the 1990s and early 2000s the transition from communism to capitalism saw large social and political upheavals in the country. In order to adhere to western values, the communist party was outlawed. Both culturally and politically, any association with the left-leaning measures was demonized. In the first few years a series of parties like the Social Democrats (PSD) and the National Liberals (PNL) emerged, formed mostly by ex-Communist Party members. However, both parties’ policies and direction were right-leaning conservative.

For the next 10 years, what followed was rampant corruption and the quick dismantling of most of the manufacturing infrastructure. From Western Europe’s perspective, Romania was seen as the “Wild East” struggling to catch up. The early 2000s saw a mass exodus of Romanians abroad, mainly doing agricultural and manual labor in countries like Italy or Spain.

Romania Joins EU and Dreams of Prosperity Fall Short

Romania joined the EU in 2007, which exacerbated the immigration trend as inequalities within the country began to grow. Statistics show that close to 4 million out of 23 million totalal Romanians left the country between 1989 and 2016, a percentage topped only by Syrian refugees — however, the country  was not let into the Schengen Area free travel zone until 2024.

As the new democratic dream of freedom and economic stability started to crumble, a series of increasingly further-right candidates began to emerge, especially with the lack of a true left-wing opposition movement. These candidates were often closer to political caricatures than trusted leaders, but very appealing for an increasingly jaded population. After almost 20 years since the fall of communism, the population has not felt significant quality of life improvements, with income inequality reaching an all-time high as the country was experiencing an economic boom.

Due to the concentration of wealth and resources in major urban centers like Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca, Timișoara and Iași, the rest of the country was sinking deeper into neglect and despair as young people were moving away in droves. Having tasted “freedom” and capitalism, Romanians started to look back with fondness at Ceaușescu, longing for the stability of the era. 

Enough time passed that the older generation would start looking at the dictatorship era with rose-tinted glasses and the younger generation was not informed enough to understand the dangers of far-right agitation and propaganda. This, coupled with the rise of news as entertainment, alongside the lack of civic studies in school and a general distrust of politicians as a class, led to many people dismissing politics altogether and seeing politicians as compulsive liars. À la Donald Trump, the politicians who made the most outlandish and controversial yet entertaining statements began getting the most attention. 

Journalists Răzvan Dan Petri and Vlad Adamescu run the online platform Politica La Minut, offering accessible analysis of the often confusing state of Romanian politics. They popularized the term “political cartel” to refer to the almost incestuous merging of opposition parties, who, despite using terms like liberal or socialist are still ultimately conservative. Historical post-89 PSD and PNL represented the dominant political forces for the first couple of decades, the power often switching between the two despite their stance on most issues being fairly similar. When the two parties formed a political alliance in 2014, the term ‘’cartelization’’ started being used to refer to the move towards a consolidated power block.

2014 Election Sets Stage for Rise in Right-Wing Politics

The 2014 presidential election is perhaps the closest example of what Romania is currently facing. After two terms of Traian Băsescu (a low-key bully, twice impeached but beloved), yet another dangerous candidate emerged: Victor Ponta. His outlandish TV appearances and “anti-system” stance, yet earned him quite a few supporters in Romania. He was also openly pro-Russia and China. His adversary was Klaus Johannis, a moderate centrist Transylvanian Saxon seen as the kind of progressive, pro-European leader that would finally get Romania in line with Western Europe. 

Amidst chaos and tension surrounding the election with record turnout and the diaspora rallying behind Johannis, his victory felt like a vibe shift. However, his term turned out to be rather uneventful with public support with his approval rate plummeting during his second term. Once a beacon of hope, he was now regarded with the same disappointment many American people hold towards former president Barack Obama. The overwhelming influence of the highly conservative, vocally anti-LGBT+ Romanian Orthodox Church and its central role in Romanian life is another important factor in understanding the current poly-crisis or “policriză.” [“Poly-crisis” is a term for when multiple crises in areas like economics, the environment, domestic and international politics unfold at once. –Ed.]

The sudden growth of Romanian-language Internet content and Facebook use spreading among less tech-savvy boomers and the elderly set the stage for the rise of someone like Călin Georgescu. “Romanian society, despite the progress made over the past few years, is still a traditional, patriarchal and highly shaped by religious factors, which add to its more conservative positioning,” said Andrada Cilibiu, spokesperson from Centrul Filia, a feminist organisation fighting domestic violence. “The discourse from candidates like Călin Georgescu, George Simion and other extreme right parties only gave these lingering attitudes an outlet. Gender equality was never a priority for those in positions of political and administrative power, the education system is brimming with sexism and stereotypes, women are not represented in politics and gendered violence is still strongly present in our society,” she said. 

Georgescu ran as an Independent after being kicked out by the most prominent far-right party AUR – whose acronym means “gold” in Romanian. AUR gained notoriety in the mid-2010s when they tried to implement anti-LGBTQ+ measures adopted by Viktor Orban in Hungary. AUR supported a failed 2018 referendum initiated by the Coalition for Family (CpF), an umbrella group which demanded changing the Constitution to explicitly define marriage as the union between man and woman. As recently as 2022 they tried banning the mention of anything LGBTQ+ related in schools and universities using on archaic anti-pedophilia law for their argument. 

AUR holds 63 of 331 seats in the Romanian Parliament’s Chamber of Deputies and 6 of 33 seats for Romanian representatives in European Parliament.

Organizing Against Far-Right Politics Online

“As a trans woman, I’m left powerless against a tide that seems inevitable, and with it, I wonder what is the point in staying here? Progress is slow. It takes time, time that could be better spent elsewhere. [Cis-heterosexual] people will go on with their lives and try to change the system, as they have done so until now, but I question how much support they could realistically provide to the LGBTQ+ community. The only thing I can do is rest, wait, and plan accordingly. I can only hope and vote so that we do not end up along the likes of Hungary or Poland,” Ellie, age 24, said.

Georgescu’s campaign went beyond the simple overtly Nazi component by integrating in a series of pseudoscientific beliefs such as energy healing and fashioning himself into a messianic figure. Despite his absurdist views, he ran on a platform of “Make Romania great again,” promising everyone job security and infinite energy – both in the mystical and literal sense – especially as people faced the first winter where energy was no longer subsidized by the state. 

His views were so extreme it led to a series of protests organized by students and queer activists, including protests abroad. “We, as Romanians, are all tired of a corrupt system, but an extreme right regime isn’t the solution,” said Julie Chirteș, part of the group who organized the student protests in The Hague, The Netherlands. “We are scared we might not be able to go back home because, if we do, we will lose our freedom. We aren’t fighting against a candidate; we are fighting against a dangerous political ideology,” she said. 

“In my friend circle, there was a whole spectrum of emotions, from desperation and a very intense desire to leave the country to people feeling energised to not go down without a fight, to people being worried but still thinking that the Parliament would keep extremists in check,” said feminist podcaster Mara Mărăcinescu. While the protests were a welcome pushback, Mărăcinescu felt that the left is still very divided, hearing a lot of confusion on messaging, and homophobic remarks circulating within the WhatsApp groups where the protests were organized. Furthermore, the general population couldn’t fully grasp the scope of Georgescu’s threat. “Most people who aren’t outright Fascists don’t view and don’t perceive Georgescu as being as dangerous as we on the left imagine,” she said. “That only makes the right wingers more powerful.”

When universities and even the hyper-conservative Romanian Orthodox Church started publishing anti-Georgescu statements, firmly expressing their pro-EU stance, the election gained a new sense of urgency beyond party lines.

“The people in Romania have more or less united in a common fight against a Fascist government. It’s one of the few rare moments in which everyone is starting to realize just how dangerous this far-right path is and they’re doing something about it. It is impressive to see even the more ‘extremist’ institutions, such as the Orthodox Church […] reject the Fascist leader,” said Augustine, age 24, a DJ and member of the transgender collective Gender Blender.

Shock Election Result in November 2024

After Călin Georgescu’s first-round win last November — with 22.9% of the vote — an investigation into his predominantly online campaign revealed a high chance of Russian interference and foreign monetary contributions. TikTok influencers were allegedly compensated to post pro-Georgescu videos, while an entire content farm organized through Telegram groups was serving people pre-packaged content.

Bots were deployed to comment with statements like “Georgescu președinte!; Georgescu for president!” under any election-related videos, in order to manipulate the algorithm through sheer volume. Comment sections of videos from the other candidates were also flooded with hashtags like ”Votez Călin Georgescu; I vote Călin Georgescu”) and “Susțin schimbarea; I support change.” They also allegedly hijacked the #stabilityandintegrity hashtag used by the National Liberals (PNL), historically a center-right party. “Romania has the most TikTok accounts per capita in the EU, being the most used social media platform after Facebook,” said Politica La Minut publisher Vlad Adamescu. “TikTok content reaches far and wide, even in rural areas.” The younger generation of “digital natives” who grew up with Internet content might be less susceptible towards misinformation compared to older generations, he believes.

The election’s annulment sparked contradictory reactions. “My first reaction was to be afraid of the anger I’d expect from people who voted for Georgescu,” says Maracinescu. ”I think both sides were surprised and angry, although at the same time there was a general sense of relief at least from my perspective and that of my bubble.”

Adamescu thinks that the way in which the authorities in charge of overseeing the election have mishandled the communication and transparency behind the annulment had an enormous impact in galvanizing open support for the Nationalists in 2025. “The politicians and authorities didn’t bother giving out to the public a detailed, well argumented explanation on the necessity to annul the election results,” Adamescu says. They didn’t present irrefutable proof of foreign interference, nor did they bring up the possibility of the involvement of internal factors in Călin Georgescu’s campaign. “Obviously, the lack of an official statement was swiftly filled with conspiracy theories and Nationalist messaging,” he said.

Simion Wins First Round of Re-Run Election in 2025

After being arrested in the street in February 2025 on charges of attempting “incitement to actions against the constitutional order,” Georgescu was banned from running again. The power vacuum was quickly exploited by George Simion, the leader and founder of AUR in 2019. Simion scooped up Georgescu’s supporters, who view him as Simion’s spiritual leader, despite not having his official endorsement. 

On May 4, 2025 Simion won, the first round of the new election with 42% of the votes. He went from organizing protests and famously confronting the PSD Senator Șerban Nicolae on television in 2008, to becoming a loud and aggressive Parliament member, often getting physical with his colleagues. He is pro-Trump, claims he’s the only one who can keep Romania in NATO and the EU, and is endorsed by Italian right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni; he teases bringing in Călin Georgescu as prime minister. 

If as recently as 2023 he was expressing support for the rights of women and feminism, Simion famously said to his colleague and ex-party member Diana Șoșoacă that he would sexually assault her during a Parliamentary meeting. Simion might be evasive when it comes to expressing support of the Nazi ideas Georgescu was shamelessly disseminating, but his alignment is clearly with Georgescu, who he considers “the voice of the Romanian people.” His victory would lead to a rollback of human rights, especially for the LGBTQ+, women and minorities such as the Roma [Traveler] or Hungarian [Magyar] populations.

“We could very easily envision the implementation of anti-homosexual laws like in Bulgaria and Hungary or the Polish-style ‘LGBT-free zones’ [could] happen in Romania as well’,’ Vlad Adamescu said. ’’Until now, the only regional isolationist policies were being targeted towards the Hungarian minorities,” Adamescu said. “Considering the country’s economic situation, we can imagine a scenario where Simion would be looking for scapegoats and sexual minorities — who he’s already demonized in his campaign — would be his prime target, alongside migrants.” He also thinks Hungarian minorities would be another mark, considering Simion has been desecrating and vandalizing Hungarian graves during AUR-led anti-Hungarian protests in the military graveyard on Valea Uzului.

He also allegedly used public money to print 300,000 copies of a Project 2025-style manifesto book through a personal friend’s company that he distributed freely in November 2024. He also promised “case la 1 leu” (“houses for 1 leu” / 25 cents) for everyone in the diaspora willing to move back to Romania before the first round of the elections, which he later dismissed as simply “a marketing strategy.”

Minorities Risk Discrimination

For Roma people facing constant othering, discrimination and rampant racism, E-Romnja NGO representative Carmen Gheorghe thinks that there’s never been a presidential or parliamentary candidate whose platform included Roma issues. She has seen the subject being brought up in local elections, but their messaging is always about cleaning up areas or building barriers instead of taking measures that would support Roma communities. She is aware of the division and lack of information that also pertains to her community. Most of the time Roma voices are either ostracized or ignored. During the elections there is a sudden interest from candidates to hear from them, which often represents the only time they are asked for their opinion.

“There are people who have changed their stance over the course [of the current election] and there are also people that stay true to their beliefs and put their hopes in the hands of white savior figures,” Gheorghe said. “We expect that [in] Romania, and in general, marginalized people [are] aware of the dangers of certain doctrines promoted by parties or politicians, but unfortunately things look completely different,” she says. She thinks the Romani are also part of the population who didn’t get to learn about the dangers of fascism and its Romanian branch in the [Legionary Movement] because of the lack of emphasis on the topic in schools.

“We need to ask ourselves what kind of information do Roma people, young people, poor people from small towns or from rural areas have access to, and who is delivering them. Of course they access social media platform where unfortunately there’s a lot of information from unverified sources or downright false [information] and people are looking for a paternalistic, white savior figure that promises water, food and energy [Georgescu’s slogan/agenda] which is exactly what many people that live in segregated areas without running water, electricity or roads, with no job opportunities are looking for,” she said.

“It really frightens me that extremism will have space to proudly manifest, feeding on itself, alongside the hatred towards sexual and ethnic minorities or abortion bans,” she said.  “Simion’s victory would be a grave threat to the few rights as a civic society have managed to win in the past 20 years.”

May 18: Second Round of the New Election

On Sunday, May 18, George Simion will be running in the second and final round of the presidential elections against independent candidate Nicușor Dan, the technocratic ex-Bucharest mayor whose slogan is “România onestă,” Honest Romania. Dan is endorsed by the anti-establishment Liberal party USR, who let go of Elena Lasconi, the candidate they previously backed in the November elections. Lasconi quickly fell from grace and plummeted in approval ratings after a series of unhinged reactions as the runner-up in the annulled election, including a heartfelt X (Twitter) message addressed to Donald Trump.

In an interview with Euronews, Simion reinforced the idea that Georgescu was rightfully elected, suggesting that the opposition who supported the annulment are the real extremists. While trying to play nice and give out the impression that unlike Georgescu, he respects the electoral process and promises to participate in every debate, it is quite clear to see where his allegiances lie, boosting his fine-tuned online campaign after skipping a debate organized by liberal TV station Digi24 on May 11.

Dan, who won 20.3% of the vote in the first round, leading in the large urban areas, would need somewhere between 2.5 and 3 million votes to win the election. Sociologist Remus Ștefureac from Statistics institute INSCOP projects an 10-13% increase in voter turnout this Sunday. 

“I believe this should be a vote of solidarity and not choosing the lesser evil,” Carmen Gheorghe says.

“Every electoral cycle we are told that these are the most important elections we faced so far, except this time it’s actually true,” says Vlad Adamescu in a video published May 8, appealing to all the influencers and digital content creators, regardless of their affiliation or their level of involvement in politics in a call to rally behind Nicușor Dan and do their civic duty not just by voting but by convincing their followers who might be on the fence to vote for the right candidate. 

“The winner would have the means and the opportunity to reshape the Romanian state to their will,” he says. 

Romanian Andra Amber Nikolayi writes about electronic music, contemporary art, social issues and their intersections. Bylines include The Wire, Bandcamp Daily, Electronic Beats, Revista Arta, Positionen and Scena9. – @amberamberdj

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Romania: Bucharest Pride Under Siege

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