South-Eastern Europe
septembre 9, 2025By Maria Luisa Guerava, Romanian researcher and activist for progressive issues.
This article was first published in Cross-Boarder Talks on 5th of September 2025. Link to the original article: Importing prejudice: why is xenophobia surging in Romania? – Cross-border Talks.
In the past couple of weeks, xenophobia seems to have reached a new height, with two violent attacks against migrants in Bucharest and Cluj, and with the Bucharest Mayor’s Office social media being flooded with a flurry of xenophobic comments. What does this say about Romania, an emigration-country by excellence? And why are these events happening now?
While Romania has historically been a country of emigration since the 1989 Revolution, with thousands of people leaving for the West in search of better-paid jobs, the country has witnessed in the past half-decade an increase in immigration from outside the EU, mainly from South Asia. These migrants work mainly in four areas of the economy: production, construction, HoReCa, and support services (e.g. cleaning or babysitting). They can be seen on the streets of main cities delivering food with their Glovo or Bolt backpacks riding their bikes or scooters; they can be seen working behind the counter at the famous pastry chain Luca or in the kitchens of numerous restaurants.
Although the yearly work-permit quota has continually increased from 5,500 in 2015 to 100,000 since 2022, it is estimated that around 108,000 migrants live and work in Romania (0,57% of the total population). Since demographic data is not well compiled by the state authorities, it is not known whether all the migrants who receive a work permit and a visa remain in Romania more than one year, or if they leave for other Schengen countries or if they return but there seems to be a mixture of those three situations.
Online incitement sparks real-world violence
Up until now, the Romanian far-right — represented by the parties AUR, SOS, POT and Noua Dreapta (the New Right) — has not had a particularly xenophobic discourse, with a few exceptions. One example is from May 2025 when AUR MP Dan Tănasă stated “I don’t want to see one asylum seeker or refugee walking the streets of Romania” but he was promptly rebuked by his own colleague AUR MP Mohammad Murad who retorted “What would it be like if an Italian or a Spaniard or a German behaved like this with Romanians?”. AUR’s leader, George Simion seemed to have taken Giorgia Meloni’s path, by saying that it is the endless wars in the Middle East that cause waves of migration and that neocolonialism must stop. These two examples also highlight the fact that the Romanian far-right confuses the concepts of “migrants” with that of “refugees”.
Moreover, AUR’s pragmatic approach towards immigration can be explained by the fact that many Romanian businesspeople support AUR, and the import of workforce is demanded by the Romanian employers mainly. One prominent example being AUR’s co-founder and VP, Marius Dorin Lulea, who owns several construction companies tied to other MPs. However, on August 19th, Tănasă made racist and xenophobic public statements on his social media profile, instructing Romanians to refuse food that is delivered by foreigners, with Murad rebuking him again. Ten days later, George Simion reposted on his social media a news story from February 2025 about a migrant worker who had been accused of sexual assault.
Unfortunately, these xenophobic statements do not remain only at the discursive level, but are translated into acts of violence, both in real life and online. As mentioned before, on August 27th, a 20-year-old Romanian broadcast himself on social media when punching a foreign delivery rider in the face. He was swiftly apprehended by an off-duty police officer and was placed in preventative arrest. The same day, a migrant worker was beaten into a coma by a Romanian in Cluj. Nonetheless, the circumstances surrounding this case are yet unclear — it appears to be the case of a Romanian Roma man retaliating against a foreigner who has supposedly assaulted his sister. Following this incident, social media was flooded with misinformation about cases of migrants raping or sexually assaulting Romanian women, with no source of where this information came from. Some users on social media took the bait and started writing xenophobic and racist comments.
A familiar playbook: scapegoating tactics as a distraction from austerity policies
All this seems like it’s taken from the Western far-right playbook, of stoking fear into the local population that foreign young men are raping or sexually assaulting local women. The exact same case happened earlier this year in Northern Ireland, and the irony is that the accused migrants were Romanian. This incident was followed by weeks of unrest and xenophobic riots, leading to violence such as arson (burning the houses where Romanians were thought to be living in), or beating ups. The paradox here is that Romanians themselves have been victims of xenophobia and racism in Western Europe for decades, yet they are starting to become the perpetrators in their own country against foreigners.
The timing of this increase in xenophobic violence is very interesting as well. Following an austerity wave since the beginning of the newly-elected president Nicusor Dan, affecting primarily the public sector, education and healthcare, trade unions are starting to organize for an autumn of protests. On September 8th, a number of protests and strike pickets are scheduled around educational institutions. Class solidarity is slowly starting to be built, with students joining their teachers and professors in protest for example. This xenophobic wave seems, indeed, to be distracting the workers from the real problem they’re facing (austerity) and directing them towards scapegoats (migrants). Unfortunately, just because a group of people was once a victim of xenophobia when they were migrants (the Irish, the Romanians), this does not prevent them from applying the same xenophobia in their own country if the far-right gets a hold of the public discourse.
The urgent need for a coherent response to xenophobia
In the absence of a clear, evidence-based migration strategy, Romania is bound to repeat the same mistakes made by its Western counterparts. There are currently some attempts at drafting some policy — mainly local-level “migrant integration” strategies — but these are not sufficient. Indeed, Romania’s migration policy has been heavily influenced by the powerful lobby of employers associations and the current local-level “integration strategies” are submitted to online public debate. While it is laudable to make policy a democratic exercise, putting a sensitive topic up for online public debate without preventing the spread of misinformation is a recipe for disaster. This is exactly what happened at the end of this summer, when the Bucharest Town Hall put its “migrant integration” strategy up for debate on social media, and in a few hours it was flooded with xenophobic comments. It seems that this was instrumented by far-right groups, with Noua Dreapta being the most plausible catalyst. Usually, online public debates of local matters barely garner any attention from locals, yet this particular one attracted thousands of comments. On September 2nd, Noua Dreapta had scheduled a fascist march through Bucharest, which — incredibly — was initially approved by the Bucharest Town Hall on the grounds of freedom of speech, but was then cancelled following the repeated demands by human rights and anti-facist NGOs and institutions.
Therefore, there is a crucial need to take serious action against racism and xenophobia before it takes hold of the public sentiment — and this action needs to be taken both at the institutional level by state authorities, as well as by the media and the NGO scene. Firstly, it is important to have a coordinated and strong communication campaign against xenophobia and racism, which also includes the voices of migrants. It is important to appeal to Romanians’ sense of solidarity with the fact of being a migrant, to remind them of their migrant experiences and to humanise the foreign workers that deliver their food. Moreover, the state must engage employers associations – vocal in their demand for foreign workforce – by compelling them to finance cultural and social initiatives for migrants and locals. Simultaneously, a concerted effort by state authorities and the media is needed to address a complex but critical challenge: countering far-right misinformation about migrants. Ultimately, any integration strategy is doomed to fail without including migrants in its design. This includes integrating their informal associations into the dialogue process, analysing their needs, and incorporating their feedback. Without this inclusion, policies risk being merely aspirational documents.
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Maria-Luisa Guevara is a nom de guerre of a Romanian researcher and activist for housing rights, workers’ rights of non-European workers and progressive issues in general. […]
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juin 16, 2025By Antony Todorov, New Bulgarian University.
We usually understand war as organized mass violence, justice as an ethical category, and politics as the “art of the possible” and a way of living together, despite our differences. Their combination is always a great test of reason and morality.
The war in Ukraine has put to the test the world order established as a result of the United Nations’ victory over Nazism and fascism in 1945. This new world order integrates new principles of international law, but above all the principles of respect for human rights and compliance not only with treaties, but also with international norms of justice.
In the decades since, international relations, without changing their anarchical nature (lack of a central world authority), have nevertheless been institutionalized through the creation of a huge number of international organizations and the signing of countless new interstate treaties. In many cases, states honor their obligations, but in many cases, they act selfishly and sometimes behave like brigands outside the law and morality.
The war in Ukraine is discussed more than ever today in light of the glimmering hopes for its termination. One can see the exhaustion of the combatants, fatigue among their allies, even its banalization that always comes after two or three years. How it can end has become the central topic of many political debates.
I think that a certain coldness in analyzing the possibilities for such an end is not only useful, but increasingly imperative. If the debate manages to free itself from categorical statements that do not accept any other point of view, from something like both epistemological and axiological fundamentalism, it is possible to find a solution. A solution that will necessarily be some kind of fragile or temporary balance between the power, the justice, and the possible. Because the biggest risk is that this war will become indefinite or subside like the Korean War (1951-1953), where the North and the South are still officially at war, even though they signed an armistice.
What have we learned about Ukraine?
One of the propaganda theses of Russian nationalists is that Ukraine is an “artificial state”, somehow accidentally created by historical circumstances on a territory previously called Little Russia and New Russia. I would be surprised if any current state is not “artificial”. State borders are not geology, but conquests and politics, there is nothing “natural” about them.
Can we say that the current borders of Ukraine were drawn fairly? After World War II, Ukraine expanded to the west with part of Galicia, Volhynia, Carpathian Ruthenia, Northern Bukovina, Bessarabia, Budzhak, and in 1954, by decision of Nikita Khrushchev, with Crimea. Was it fair? I don’t know, but at the time it was accepted as such, and Ukraine was among the countries most affected during the war (the front passed to the east, and then to the west, twice through the country), as well as in Belarus and Poland. That is why both countries post-soviet during the Cold War each had one additional vote in the UN General Assembly, even though they were part of the USSR (also with one vote).
Today we cannot easily dispute borders – the principle of respecting the territorial integrity of states and their borders is firmly established in international law. Ukraine’s borders are legitimate by virtue of uti possidetis juris – its administrative borders upon the dissolution of the Soviet Federation. Therefore, the history of the creation of the independent Ukrainian state cannot be a basis today for redrawing its borders.
On the other hand, there is the question of who owns certain territories. Formally, each belongs to a certain state, but in fact we must admit that the territories belong primarily to their permanent inhabitants. Therefore, any territorial dispute that does not take into account the demands of the permanent inhabitants of the territory is an imperialist division, but not one seeking a fair solution. And therefore, if today we are talking about Donbass or Crimea, it is best to take into account in the plans what their permanent inhabitants want, and what they want freely, and not under someone’s dictate. Here, however, we are faced with another phenomenon – separatism, but also the right of peoples to self-determination. Is the second always a legitimate argument for the first? Is the demand for separation into an independent state of Catalonia legitimate in a democratic Spain, where the region has de facto autonomy? And what is the difference with Scotland, where they also wanted separation from the United Kingdom, an old democracy. And did the Northern League in Italy legitimately demand the separation of Padania as a separate state? In Catalonia and Padania, separatism was of the rich provinces against the rest, while in Scotland, separatism was for the preservation of the welfare state against the neoliberal policies of the central government. But in all three cases, the central government did not send the army against the separatists but sent negotiators.
In Ukraine, the interim government in 2014, mainly under pressure from the far-right Svoboda party declared an anti-terrorist operation against the protesters in Donbas. Although at that time these separatists only wanted a “special status” for their region, not even autonomy. It is true that they also received support from Russia, which makes them very different from the examples of Catalonia, Padania or Scotland. But the decision of the central government to choose force from the very beginning turned out to be wrong. This only exacerbated the conflict, and the separatists declared two unrecognized republics (April-May 2014). When the then newly elected President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko introduced a special status for Donbas in October 2014, it was already too late. In fact, the war began, although initially between private and irregular military formations (« Azov », « Aydar » and volunteers from « Right Sector » on the Ukrainian side ; separatists and Russian volunteers and mercenaries in “Wagner” on the other side, including Chechens, before becoming interstate war eight years later.
What are the scenarios for the end of the war?
The war in Ukraine can end in different ways. But each of them has a different price, requires different conditions for its implementation. It is the consequences of one or another “end of the war” that are important in order to assess which of them is at least slightly better than the others.
A just peace
It would undoubtedly be fair to restore the territorial integrity of the country, for the aggressor to take responsibility and retaliate for the damage caused, and for those responsible for starting the war to be brought to justice. Fair, but unattainable, unless we just imagine that the war could end in a way described as a “victory for Ukraine”. Unless, also, those supporting Ukraine decide to help by openly entering the war against the Russian Federation, something that no one in the EU, the US, or NATO even thinks about. Because the consequences will be much worse than if this does not happen. Because of the unacceptable maxim “Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus” (“Let justice be done, even if the world perishes”), because the price of justice cannot be higher than the survival of the world. Therefore, a just peace will probably have to wait for things to change over time.
The military solution
We should not rule out ending the war by force, if one or the other side prevails over the other and imposes its conditions on it. Despite the determination of the Ukrainians to resist aggression, their resources undoubtedly remain limited (demographic, mobilization, territorial) in front of the three times more populous Russian Federation, which also has a significant geographical landscape.
Some observers have already expressed the opinion that if Ukraine had not given up Soviet nuclear weapons on its territory in 1992, it would not have been attacked now. Because it would have used them against the aggressor. Although I cannot imagine a Ukrainian government (unless it is exclusively far-right) that would decide to do this. At least because of the risk of international isolation, but also for moral reasons. Not to mention the risk of retaliation and monstrous consequences far exceeding those of Chernobyl.
Russia, it seems, is also not in a position to prevail, at least not in the near future. Its attempt to achieve immediate success in a week initially failed due to Ukrainian resistance. Unexpected for the Russians, who very wrongly imagined that they would be greeted as “liberators” in Kiev (in some of the abandoned armored personnel carriers to Kiev, parade uniforms were found!).
In military terms, a stalemate is emerging – an impossible victory, at least in the near future, for either side. Thus, the war risks ending like the Korean one – a 70-year-long ceasefire, but an official state of war. This would be a very bad option for Europe, too, because it would be an eternally smoldering war.
Peace through strength
This formula has been repeatedly uttered by European leaders, but they refrain from deciphering it in detail. In short, the idea is that by providing military assistance to Ukraine, it will gain a better position in the negotiations for a ceasefire with Russia. Theoretically, this is justified, but it requires certain conditions. Most importantly, time during which the balance of power will change, but also a certain armistice so that these forces can be accumulated. The risk is that this time will also be used by Russia to accumulate forces. And if military actions continue, then the time may be extended too much and ultimately prove to be insufficient. In essence, the formula envisages the continuation of the war, although possibly with less intensity. Here, another risk is the mutual weakening of the parties, and it is not certain that Ukraine will do so more slowly. Even vice versa, Russia may continue to advance during this time, albeit slowly.
To support Ukraine militarily in order to have the power to negotiate seems completely legitimate from the point of view of justice. But war and military force are legitimate only if they are kept within the limits of proportionality, and therefore – within the limits of justice. Because the end never justifies the means. Weapons usually kill, but some are already banned by international conventions, so the supply to Ukraine of banned anti-personnel mines, banned cluster munitions and the like, even if the other side also uses them, is unacceptable. The border can easily be crossed with chemical and biological weapons (also banned), as well as nuclear ones.
Compromise: not a very fair peace
Now comes the turn of compromises, which can in no way be necessarily and perfectly fair. Initially, there is talk of a ceasefire under certain conditions, later of a lasting peace settlement and a peace treaty. All of this now seems so difficult, and so impossible, although it is some way out of a situation of perpetual war.
Several issues are being discussed: Ukraine’s membership in NATO and in general guarantees for the country’s security, possible territorial changes for Donbas and Crimea, the possibility of deploying peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and along the ceasefire line… But also the prospects for Ukraine’s membership in the EU.
Especially after the election of Donald Trump as US president and his initiative for immediate peace in Ukraine, the country’s membership in NATO no longer seems to be on the agenda. But if it is understandable why Ukraine wants this (security guarantees), it is more difficult to answer why NATO wants it?
Will Ukraine have to cede territories? It is not fair, no doubt, but if it gives it a chance to recover from the war, it can probably be discussed. The issue of territories in general can be postponed, especially for Crimea (which President Zelensky himself has already mentioned).
It is completely unclear what kind of peacekeepers can be deployed between the two armies. Russia categorically rejects this being European forces (they are part of NATO), but allows non-European, for example, Chinese peacekeepers under the UN flag. Whether Ukraine will accept it is not clear. And for how long, how far along this long line of contact? With what forces, how many and for what exactly? Will such a force be able to prevent the renewal of the war? These questions, obviously, cannot be answered now. But isn’t a bad peace better than any war? At least because it prevents new victims and destruction.
What do we do when we cannot achieve justice?
In 2020, the streets of Sofia and other major cities in the country were flooded with civil protests demanding the resignation of then-Prime Minister Boyko Borisov and then-Prosecutor General Ivan Geshev. These demands became a reality, but after seven consecutive parliamentary elections, hardly anyone will confidently say that justice has prevailed. Simply because the supporters of the “end of the GERB model” did not have the resources and power to achieve it. What did society do? Well, it accepted the situation as it is, with the possible hope that in the future it will change (which, in turn, no one can guarantee).
In 1940, Stalin ordered the Red Army to launch an attack on neutral Finland to correct the joint border. This long-standing “hidden war” in Soviet historiography ended with Finnish territorial concessions, which are still valid today. This was not fair at all, especially for the Finns, but they accepted it because after 1945 they had neither the strength nor the support to change it, and because their potential allies were aware that changing this reality by force would produce much more negative results than simply accepting it. But Finland ultimately won because it developed and modernized as a neutral country during the Cold War, although it was a member of NATO.
There are many more examples of wars that ended unjustly, the results of which were accepted by the international community for the above reasons. Did the Korean War end justly – no, because ultimately no one was responsible for starting it. Did the 1967 war in the Middle East, when Israel occupied the Golan Heights in Syria, as well as the entire city of Jerusalem, end justly, and this continues to this day? No, but the rest accept (for now) the situation, because changing it by force would have worse consequences.
After 1945, Poland was reshaped – it ceded to the Soviet Union the territories that are now western Belarus and western Ukraine, but received in return the former German territories of Pomorie (Pomerania), Śląsk (Lower Silesia) and part of East Prussia. And today’s University of Wrocław (old Breslau) is the successor to the Polish University of Lviv (now a Ukrainian city). Was that fair? I don’t know, but the Poles from Lviv were moved (?) to the west, and the Germans from Śląsk were deported to Germany. Ethnic cleansing? Undoubtedly, but by today’s standards, it seemed acceptable at the time against the backdrop of war-torn Europe, where the blame was entirely attributed to the Germans.
Was the division of Germany after World War II fair? On the one hand, many were convinced at the time that Germans as a whole were to blame for what had happened and had to bear the consequences. But all Germans? And those born after 1945? It is obvious that this division was not fair, it was imposed by new circumstances – the division of Europe and the world according to the logic of the Cold War. But the Germans, and the rest, waited before Germany was reunified. No one even thought of doing this by force, for the reasons above.
What is possible?
This is precisely the challenge for politics, since war (a continuation of politics by other means) and morality (restrictions on politics by other means) cannot achieve the desired goal by themselves – the restoration of justice. At least not immediately.
But moral considerations are always important. Because a war that completely ignores moral restrictions (to spare civilians, not to kill prisoners of war, not to shoot doctors and journalists…), such a war is just mass murder without political goals. And politics that completely ignores moral considerations is simply organized crime. We misread Machiavelli, who advises the ruler not to ignore morality, but to set aside his own moral understandings if this prevents him from preserving the life and well-being of his subjects. Machiavelli preaches a hierarchy of moral commitments, not the abandonment of morality in politics.
Therefore, in seeking solutions to the war in Ukraine, it is good to be aware of two things in order to restore dialogue on this issue. You are not a warmonger if you are concerned about the war ending with a just peace. You are simply putting justice at the forefront, but to some extent underestimating the conditions for its realization and the price for it. You are not encouraging the aggressor if you want an immediate end to the war, even under not very fair conditions. You simply believe that even a bad peace is better than a good war, leaving aside the need for a comprehensive just solution.
The danger in this case is if we are misled by historical analogies. It is true that as humans in new situations we rely on our previous experience. But today, when it is said that we are almost in the situation of 1939, when concessions to Hitler only encouraged him to start a devastating war, this can greatly mislead us. What could the leaders of democracies do then against Hitler’s intentions? A preventive war? Or instead of the “strange war” after September 1, 1939 – a decisive offensive? But they did not have the strength to overcome the “Siegfried Line” on the Rhine and had to pass through neutral Belgium and the Netherlands. Would they have done it, as Hitler later did? I do not believe it.
And today, could a large-scale war in Ukraine have been prevented by a preemptive attack? No, of course. Or the rapid admission of Ukraine to NATO back in 2008? Under Viktor Yanukovych, then Prime Minister of Ukraine? And would this not have immediately provoked an aggressive reaction from Russia and an “agreed-upon occupation”? Who knows, but the risk would be great. The danger is that historical analogies mislead us.
Justice versus real possibilities – an extremely difficult choice, but still a choice. A classic choice between desire and possibilities. It seems that there is no possibility of achieving a truly just peace immediately. But continuing the war is also not just. Where the measure is, I don’t know, but it is worth looking for.
One can start with a ceasefire (a fragile truce), followed by an agreed more permanent truce and distancing of the belligerents, possibly with the deployment of peacekeepers for observation. As well as accepting (for now) the territorial reality (Donbass and Crimea under Russian control). Which does not necessarily mean accepting the situation as just.
This also does not mean not seeking justice. One can even start by simply prosecuting the crimes committed on the ground. Because behind each one, not least, there is a specific perpetrator who cannot justify himself with “I was following orders.” But the crimes on both sides, starting in 2014: not only Bucha, not only the murders of Ukrainian civilians and prisoners of war, but also the fire in Odessa and the deaths of civilians in Donbass due to the fault of formations such as the Azov or Aidar regiments (then repeatedly indicated by Amnesty International as responsible for this).
An effort for restorative justice for not the most serious crimes is probably also possible. Such organized actions have the chance to restore confidence among the victims, and among public opinion, that some justice is possible after all. Even before the major perpetrators of the tragedy are brought to justice. By the way, if we talk about President Putin’s responsibility, there are probably many Russians in Russia itself who would hold him accountable – they deserve to be helped. This will also contribute to reduce hatred between Ukrainians and Russians – they will remain neighbors and, in the future, they will have to find ways to reconcile (France and Germany can certainly help in this regard with their successful attempt at reconciliation).
Finally, the restoration of Ukraine will come. But if this means that the richest will win again and the poorest will become poorer again, as is usual in such situations, if this turns into “business as usual” for accumulating profits and supporting the oligarchs, it will be very risky. Because it will kill any hope for justice.
Also, effective actions to limit the use of small arms by civilians – after every war, the uncontrolled dissemination of weapons among the population is a great danger to societies. Ukraine is not the USA, but a European country, it can safely adopt legislation like the UK, which is extremely restrictive in this regard.
Ukraine can seriously begin to build a society that will integrate into the EU: a rule of law, respect for minorities (including Russian-speaking ones), resolute isolation of far-right nationalists, respect for diversity. Such a promise could enthuse Ukrainians no less than the defense of their independence.
Imagine!
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Antony Todorov is a political scientist and a professor at the New Bulgarian University. He was visiting teacher at ULB (Brussels) and at the University of Bucharest and president of the Bulgarian Political Science Association from 2001 to 2012. His research interests lie in democracy, party politics, and the study of elections. […]
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juin 10, 2025By Antony Todorov, New Bulgarian University.
Let us recall: with its accession to the EU in 2007, Bulgaria assumed the obligation to join the monetary union (the eurozone) when it managed to meet the criteria for this, and until then a derogation is in effect. This is an obligation for all EU countries, with one exception – Denmark. Since 2020, Bulgaria has been in ERM II (European exchange rate mechanism), the precursor to the Eurozone. Today, it seems that Bulgaria meets the criteria for membership, that is confirmed by the relevant convergence report of the Commission.
Also, since 1997, a currency board has been operating in Bulgaria, with the exchange rate of the Bulgarian lev fixed to the euro in a ratio fixed by law (initially to the German mark). According to the rules of the board, the government does not have full freedom of monetary policy, cannot devalue the lev and cannot spend the foreign exchange reserve at its discretion. So, in essence, Bulgaria is in some way already in the eurozone, without directly using the euro. And two other countries in Europe (Montenegro and Kosovo) have given up their own currency and use the euro as their currency, without being part of the eurozone.
Against this backdrop and on the eve of the convergence report on eurozone membership, a storm of discussions and protests broke out, demanding its postponement. Back in April 2023, Vazrazhdane collected over 600,000 signatures to call a referendum “for preserving the Bulgarian lev”. The National Assembly then voted against it, and the Constitutional Court, which was seized of the issue, rejected the possibility of a referendum on an obligation under a ratified international treaty. As a result, Vazrazhdane’s official position is not “against the introduction of the euro in general”, but against the date of its introduction. However, this is not evident from the party’s current positions announced on its website. And recently, the president has also initiated a referendum on the introduction of the euro from 2026, which was diverted from discussion in the National Assembly and will probably not happen. But he has intensified public debate on the issue and placed it among the central topics of political discourse.
What are the arguments against the euro?
According to « Vazrazhdane », there are six main reasons « why we should keep the Bulgarian lev »:
1. Bulgaria will lose the right to determine its own monetary policy.
2. Bulgaria will not have an equal voice in decision-making in the eurozone.
3. We are not a priority for the European Central Bank.
4. Shock inflation in the first years, especially for essential goods.
5. Billions will be released from the currency board, which can be drained by politicians at current levels of corruption.
6. Bulgaria risks becoming indebted and going the way of Greece.
The first two arguments have been known since Bulgaria’s accession to the EU, which is no longer just an intergovernmental organization, but a highly integrated community with supranational law and institutions. In it, each member state has voluntarily granted part of its sovereign rights to supranational institutions. Bulgaria will not be an exception, this is valid for all 27 EU members, as well as for all 20 members of the eurozone. As for the equal vote, Bulgaria is also a member of the IMF, where the countries also do not have an equal vote, but no one wants the country to leave this organization. On the other hand, Bulgaria is a net user of European funds, which in total exceed many times its contribution to the general budget. The effect of these funds is visible in many cases and the country would hardly have achieved the same on its own without this solidary support from the EU.
As for shock inflation, the topic has already been widely commented on and this is only fear-mongering. Especially after our bad experience with galloping inflation in 1997, when Bulgaria fell into a financial collapse completely outside the eurozone. As can be seen, inflation is moving even without the euro.
The last two arguments do not specifically target the introduction of the euro, but corruption. The euro is not the cause of corruption, which has developed sufficiently with the use of the lev and the existence of a currency board. So, transferring deep problems in domestic politics to the euro is speculation, because nowhere else, where the single European currency has replaced the national one, have countries experienced a currency board drain or crisis like in Greece (where the cause was not the eurozone, but the corruption of the rulers).
These arguments are actually not only about the date of entry into the eurozone, but generally against the adoption of the euro, i.e. against Bulgaria’s membership in the EU. This seemingly invisible change in position strongly influences public opinion and leads to misunderstanding about what the problem is. According to a recent survey by « Measure » agency from January 2025, 57.1% of Bulgarians are against the adoption of the euro as the official currency. 39% are at the opposite pole, and 3.9% have no opinion on the issue. But when asked when to adopt the euro, the answers are different: according to 25.7% of respondents, the single European currency should be adopted from January 1, 2026. 30.8% of those surveyed believe that it is good for Bulgaria to adopt the euro, but at a later stage. And 41.4% are of the opinion that our country should not replace the lev with the euro. 2.1 percent have no opinion on the matter. These differences in opinion shows confusion, which is completely understandable, because what competence is needed for a citizen to be able to judge when exactly it is good to adopt the euro and whether it is good to adopt it at all.
This difficulty is solved by using simple arguments:
« We live in Bulgaria, of course we must keep our Lev, our children must learn our history, preserve and maintain our traditions and be grateful that we live here now in our Bulgaria! » – we read on the Facebook profile of the critics of the euro.
“I am protesting in defense of the Bulgarian lev and against the euro. I do not want a foreign currency.” – we hear from another opponent of the euro.
“The eurozone is without a way out – more poverty, less sovereignty” – we read on the website of “Vazrazhdane”.
In other words – defense of “ours” against “foreign”, defense of national identity against foreign influences. An appeal to a patriotism that is understandable to everyone and self-evident, which we have all learned from Vazov’s poem: “Everything Bulgarian and native, I love, cherish and value.” However, if we look more deeply at the poem, we will immediately ask ourselves: is “everything Bulgarian” worth being honored?
Why, however, do so many people accept such arguments with open arms? The arrogant position of some determined supporters of the euro is that these are “simple and uneducated” people, prone to all kinds of manipulations, that this is the result of Putin’s propaganda, that this is a deep misunderstanding of the true interests of Bulgaria, etc. In a modern society there is all this, but it does not seem reasonable to accept such a “simple” explanation. I think that behind the resistance to the euro there is something else that is much less talked about.
From sociological surveys and researchers’ observations, it is clear that our society is divided regarding the introduction of the euro. This division, it seems, is not on the issue of Bulgaria’s membership in the EU (on this issue there is a significant majority that supports it), but on an issue that is only at first glance about the euro. The division is actually deeper and more structural, between those who, back in 1990, Zygmund Bauman defined as globalized and localized. The new wave of globalization of the last 40 years has divided societies, including in Bulgaria, into two main categories – those who, due to their economic, cultural and social capital, successfully fit into globalization and those who, on the contrary, felt neglected, rejected, forgotten, somehow left out of its benefits. Bulgaria’s integration into the EU has been experienced in the same way – there are winners in society, but also those who are not so winners and even convinced that they are among the losers.
This is why the resistance to the introduction of the euro from January 1, 2026 actually hides the dissatisfaction with being left on the side of the losers, which is why you treat with distrust, even resistance, the official institutions that you consider to be firmly on the side of the winners and neglecting the losers. This is precisely why the most essential question is about this new inequality, fueled by very old inequalities, but the introduction of the euro is not among the causes of it. The inequalities are rooted in the logic of the dominant model of corporate global capitalism, and the attitude towards the introduction of the euro is something like collateral damage of the resistance to the widening inequalities.
What are the real risks of introducing the euro?
They are not for galloping inflation, nor for melting savings, nor for the devaluation of real estate, nor for the loss of sovereignty (already very limited with the currency board itself). Many economists are very nuanced on the issue and even those who seem to oppose the introduction of the euro from 2026 explain this issue much more complicatedly (as long as we read them in full and with understanding).
They often quote the author of the currency board, Steve Hanke, invited to Sofia for a conference organized by “Vazrazhdane” on February 7, 2025. In an extensive interview for the Bulgarian National Radio on February 28, 2025, he says: “In my opinion, joining the eurozone would be the wrong decision. A bad decision. From a political point of view, it would be a complete disaster. We know in general about the corruption of Bulgarian politicians and their desire to spend taxpayers’ money freely.” Because according to him, Bulgarian politicians are « arrogant, ignorant and corrupt. » But he also explains: “Do you know that Bulgaria is de facto in the eurozone. In the sense of the currency board, the lev is a clone of the euro. If you don’t like having the lev, you can simply exchange it at a fixed exchange rate with the euro. So the lev and the euro are equivalent.” Steve Hanke’s main argument against adopting the euro is that there is a risk that corruption will turn this into a “Greek crisis”. But he adds something else: the loss of “sovereignty of the monetary regime”, because “if something goes wrong with the euro, everyone who is de jure in the eurozone will have no way to get out. And Bulgaria could easily change its main currency – from the euro to the US dollar or some other currency.” You see, how many contradictory arguments, including the issue of sovereignty, but sovereignty also for politicians who are “arrogant, ignorant and corrupt”. Economist Boyan Durankev is much more precise in describing the benefits and risks of adopting the euro. In an interview with Radio Focus on April 24, 2025, he explains: “The euro united the countries’ currencies, and this is the good news, but it did not unite the economies, and this is the bad news. That is, the euro is like marriage – everyone is ‘for’ until they start paying bills.” The main risk is that “Europe does not have a clear common economic and fiscal policy”, i.e. something that relates to the current state of the EU and the need for deep reform is obvious. But on the other hand, according to him, the advantages of adopting the euro are great, especially with the loss of confidence in the dollar and market shocks after the exotic duties and tariffs introduced by Trump.
The referendum, initially requested by “Vazrazhdane”, but more recently by the president, played an unexpected role. It has intensified public discourse on the topic and led many to more clearly explain their theses and intentions. A debate that has been largely invisible in recent years, overshadowed to a large extent by the series of inconclusive early parliamentary elections since April 2021 and the phrase repeated to the point of trivialization that Bulgaria’s entry into the Eurozone is a strategic goal.
Bulgaria’s entry into the EU was a strategic goal, and its admission to the Schengen area and the Eurozone are a consequence of this. They are rather instruments for something far more substantial – making life in Bulgaria more attractive for Bulgarian citizens. This, the latter, however, requires many other more substantial things.
Two are the most important of them and they are necessarily related: policies against inequalities and against corruption. If, thanks to our entry into the Eurozone, these policies are encouraged and have a visible effect, citizens will be satisfied and resistance to the euro will weaken. Conversely, resistance to the euro will grow if many citizens see that its introduction does not contribute to overcoming intolerable inequalities and corruption. If, on the contrary, the eurozone is mainly benefited by corrupt politicians and businessmen, if governments act like those in Greece before the debt crisis, if the fiscal reserve of the currency board is plundered by private interests. These are the real risks, not the introduction of the euro as a national currency itself.
Ivan Vazov (1850-1921) is considered to be the “patriarch of the Bulgarian literature”, national writer with essential presence in the education.
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Antony Todorov is a political scientist and a professor at the New Bulgarian University. He was visiting teacher at ULB (Brussels) and at the University of Bucharest and president of the Bulgarian Political Science Association from 2001 to 2012. His research interests lie in democracy, party politics, and the study of elections. […]
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juin 5, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848, on the 2nd of June 2025. Link of the original article in Romanian: De la Nicușor la președintele Dan – Comunitatea Liberala.
It happened the same way back in 1996: during the campaign and on the night of victory, the crowd in the public square chanted “Emil! Emil!”, only for the elected man to become President Constantinescu a few days after the vote. Three decades later, the chant “It won’t be easy, / It will be Nicușor!” was set aside, and after the swearing-in ceremony, (almost) everyone began referring to him as President Dan.
I was present at the ceremony myself. After pointing out the urgent matter that would occupy the first weeks of his term — forming a stable majority to reduce the deficit — the new head of state listed the goals of his mandate across eleven domains, in the following order: administrative reform, the economy, health, education, justice, environment, culture, equal opportunity, foreign policy, the relationship with Moldova, and Romanians in the diaspora. His tone was far from fiery; the speech did not seek to stir public emotion, but rather to define an action plan. N. Dan will act as a kind of super-prime minister, much like Ion Iliescu during his 1992–1996 term, Emil Constantinescu, or Traian Băsescu in 2005–2007 and again in 2009–2012.
Nothing illustrates his approach to forming a government better than the way he’s gone about it: before holding the formal “consultations” required by the Constitution to nominate a prime minister, President Dan held “informal discussions” with the parties to gauge their intentions and their stance on the Cotroceni agenda. He also convened a working group to begin drafting a governing program. The process is just beginning, and it’s hard to imagine what it will produce. Dragoș Anastasiu, one of the advisors N. Dan inherited — at least until the end of June — from Ilie Bolojan, used a vivid but vague phrase: “we’re still throwing puzzle pieces onto the table.”
The fact that the new president wants to steer the executive branch became clear in how he handled the crisis at the Praid Salt Mine, caused by the recent flooding in Harghita. Nicușor Dan went to the site himself, sleeves rolled up, while the interim prime minister and his team arrived 24 hours later.
N. Dan’s authority is acknowledged by the PNL, USR, and UDMR — but not by AUR, SOS, POT, or PSD. Under its new — for now, interim — leader, the Social Democrats continue to maintain the same ambiguous posture they took between the two rounds of voting. If, ahead of the Dan-Simion final, Ciolacu and his inner circle refused to clearly encourage members to vote, now that Dan has been elected president, Grindeanu is again shifting the decision about entering government onto the shoulders of the party members. On the surface, this seems like a way of dodging responsibility, but at its core, it’s more about political gamesmanship — aimed at signaling that the direction of policy is set not by the president, but by “the PSD people,” as the phrase once went.
We’ll see in a few days whether the pressure from PSD pays off or not.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mai 28, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 26th May 2025. Link to the original article in Romanian: Cea mai grea problemă pentru noul președinte – Comunitatea Liberala.
Ion Iliescu was born in 1930, Emil Constantinescu nine years later, Traian Băsescu saw the light of day in 1951, and Klaus Iohannis in 1959. Nicușor Dan is ten years younger than his predecessor. The numbers speak for themselves: the new president belongs to a different generation. The one that took to the streets during the Revolution. In other words, those times recounted in “The New Year That Never Was.” Times that the young people voting for the first time now know very little about, since they were born the same year, their country joined the EU. I recently overheard two of them talking on a trolleybus: one claimed that Romania had been part of the USSR, while the other tried to convince him that the “communist bloc” included several states, and that the RPR and RSR were never Soviet republics.
N. Dan’s term will end shortly after we mark forty years since the fall of Ceaușescu. That is, when the number of years since the Revolution will roughly equal the duration of the communist regime. Or around the hundredth anniversary of Iliescu’s birth. But I’m not writing these lines just to point out how short a century can seem. Rather, to highlight the fact that the main political issue Nicușor Dan will face is very different from those his predecessors confronted.
Indeed, Iliescu had to manage the (re)birth of democratic parties; Constantinescu embodied the double alternation of power; under Băsescu, political parties were integrated into the European networks of conservatives, socialists, and liberals; and the Iohannis decade saw the rise of party cartelization — parties that had brought Romania into NATO and the EU, now seeking, as a reward, at least two uninterrupted decades in power. N. Dan disrupted that dream.
But the fifth president now faces a challenge that Western politicians first encountered in the mid-1990s or early 2000s: the backlash against the cartelization of pro-European and pro-Atlanticist parties — a process that, in Romania, began in 2016. Nicușor Dan was himself part of the anti-cartel movement in 2016, as founder of USR. But USR is not the only party that has, in recent years, resisted the attempt by the NATO- and EU-era establishment parties to dominate the political scene: the PSD–PNL duopoly has been challenged by AUR, as well as splinter parties from that ultranationalist formation, led by D. Șoșoacă and A. Gavrilă.
As president, N. Dan now faces a difficult choice. In other EU member states, delegitimizing cartel parties has drastically reshaped the political landscape: Italy’s Christian Democrats and Communists disappeared; in Germany, the two-and-a-half party system (CDU–CSU, SPD, plus the “half” of the Liberals) gave way to one that includes the Greens, Die Linke, and AfD; in France, the Gaullists and Socialists have been decimated, the far left and far right run rampant, and Macron’s centrist party is forced to build coalitions with a growing number of mini-parties; in the Netherlands and Belgium, the far right has become the main political force, and so on.
Lacking a party of his own, the new president must build a government that takes into account both the anti-system vote (Romania’s shorthand for opposition to cartel politics) and the extreme fragmentation of the political spectrum, now composed of eight distinct factions (PSD, AUR, PNL, USR, UDMR, SOS Romania, POT, the group of national minorities other than the Hungarian one). N. Dan cannot ignore the clearly pro-Western stance expressed in the presidential election, nor the need for stability after the Iohannis decade, during which nine prime ministers rotated through Victoria Palace. He must also weigh the immense cost of snap elections, the need to restore Romania’s credibility with international creditors, and the urgent necessity of containing political extremism — which now blends Ceaușism and Legionary rhetoric with Putinism and Trumpism.
The choice he makes in shaping a new government border on tragic — in the sense Robert Kaplan gives the term in his most recent book, also published in Romanian by Humanitas. If PSD is included in the new majority, power alternation will lose its meaning; if USR joins the three parties from the Ciolacu cabinet, then anti-system voices will be confined exclusively to the sovereigntist camp. A minority government might result in nothing more than patchwork governance, liable to unravel quickly, while a technocratic formula could see the parties competing in populism and isolating the president completely.
The most difficult challenge for Romania’s fifth president is to define the kind of majority he wants to build. Because he may very well need resources that he currently doesn’t have.
I discussed this process in the essay “A New Faked Democracy?” included in the volume I edited for Humanitas, titled How Romania Ended Up Without an Elected President. 7 Possible Answers.
Robert Kaplan, The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power, translated by Iustin Mureșanu-Ignat, Humanitas, 2025.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mai 23, 2025By Claudia Bădulescu, Free University of Brussels, Institute of European Studies.
Eighteen years after joining the European Union, Romania has shown, again, why its place is inside the European family. On 18 May the independent, pro-European mathematician-turned-mayor Nicușor Dan defeated George Simion, the leader of the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), overturning a 20-point first-round gap and ending months of breath-holding across the continent. This morning, 22 May, Romania’s Constitutional Court met in solemn session and unanimously confirmed Nicușor Dan’s victory, formally declaring him the country’s new president. With a final tally of 6,168,642 votes (53.60 %) to George Simion’s 5,339,053 (46.40 %), the Court’s validation brings the presidential contest to an unambiguous close and opens the next chapter of Romania’s democracy. And yet, before the champagne has even gone flat, Moscow’s echo-chambers are buzzing with fury, fake news and fresh conspiracies, as Russia’s hybrid war for destabilising Romania – and Central and Eastern Europe – still rages.
From November’s Annulment to May’s Miracle
To understand why this election felt existential, rewind six months. In November 2024 Romania’s first presidential round was annulled after security services traced a storm of coordinated disinformation, troll-farm amplification and opaque financing back to actors linked to the Kremlin. The decision removed the far-right influencer Călin Georgescu from the race and plunged the country into a constitutional crisis. Simion – already building a TikTok empire of grievance, orthodoxy and “Romania first” – MAGA-like slogans – presented himself as Georgescu’s political heir. On 4 May, in the rescheduled first round, Simion captured more than 40% of the vote, while Dan scraped into the run-off with barely 21%. Many analysts were convinced Dan faced a mission-impossible: in just two weeks he would have to erase a 20% difference – representing roughly 1.8-million-vote deficit left over from the first round.
But the live Euronews debate on 8 May – just hours before Europe Day – flipped the momentum. That evening Dan faced Simion in a four-hour debate that became viral proof-of-concept for patience, policy and factual politics. Women, urban voters, minorities and, critically, older Romanians who remember both Ceaușescu and Soviet tanks, began to swing in favour of Dan. Mass civic mobilisation rewrote the script on 18 May: participation vaulted from 53% in the first round to a shade above 64% in the runoff – a historic record – as people showed up determined to block the extremist and steer Romania back to the European mainstream.
Kremlin Rage, Telegram Whispers
The victory did not go down quietly in Moscow. Within hours, Russia’s foreign-ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova sneered that the 18 May ballot ‘can hardly be called an election’. Kremlin press-secretary Dmitri Peskov deemed the result “at least curious”, adding that ‘the candidate with the best chance of winning was simply forced out of the race – no attempt was even made to justify it. Putin-ally Aleksandr Dugin fumed that ‘President Macron openly intervened in Romania’s vote’ and urged Europeans to stage a revolution against what he called the EU’s ‘liberal dictatorship’. Even Telegram founder Pavel Durov chimed in, alleging French intelligence had pressured him to “silence” pro-Simion channels – an easy claim to toss into an online ecosystem primed to equate content moderation with tyranny.
These narratives were not organic. Romanian fact-checkers counted thousands of near-identical posts and AI-generated videos in the 48 hours after polls closed: claims of artificially stuffed ballot boxes, of “French agents” infiltrated Romania, doctored screenshots or videos purporting to show Dan at Masonic or Jewish events. Facebook groups that had simmered for months on vaccine hoaxes suddenly re-branded into election-denial hubs. AUR activists amplified them, then cited the resulting frenzy in their Constitutional Court complaint asking for the annulment of the presidential elections – one the Court tossed as legally void this morning. The episode fits the classic Russian military intelligence (GRU) disruptive operations playbook: deny, disorient, disrupt, amplify, repeat.
Why does the Kremlin care so much about a mid-size EU state that spends under 2 % of GDP on defense? Geography and symbolism. Romania sits on NATO’s eastern flank, shares the Black Sea with Russia and acts as Kyiv’s most reliable logistical back door. Toppling an EU-minded president, or merely paralyzing him, would reverberate from Chişinău to Warsaw, and beyond. Disrupting elections also inoculates Moscow’s domestic audience against democratic ideas: see, they’re all rigged anyway.
The May operation in Romania failed, but two hard truths remain: the social-media battlespace is still porous to disinformation, and economic frustration is still pervasive. Exit-poll data show that voters with vocational education, residents of poorer counties and many men aged 31-60 went overwhelmingly for Simion. They did so not because they crave a Slavic protectorate, but because salaries lag behind EU averages and clinics crumble while elites argue over procurement codes. Populism will continue to harvest that anger unless policies for improving infrastructure, education, health services, and rule-of-law enforcement meet it head-on.
A Five-Point Campaign for the Long War
Winning one election is not a vaccine; it is a breathing space. Five fronts matter now:
Harden the information space. Romania must implement full DSA enforcement: rapid takedown mechanisms, transparent political-ad libraries, fines that sting. Brussels should help Romania to implement EU-sponsored digital-literacy drives aimed at rural voters and diaspora groups alike.
Follow the money and the message. The National Integrity Agency should not stop at identifying who wired the three-million-euro splash into Realitatea TV or bankrolled the avalanche of AUR’s campaign letters. It must also audit how those funds were spent: on bot farms, TikTok micro-influencers, and prime-time “analysts” who recycle Kremlin talking-points about NATO, anticorruption and the war in Ukraine. Democracy can tolerate and overcome ugly speech; it cannot survive a covert business model that monetises disinformation.
Deliver visible projects. Dan’s technocratic reputation buys him a hundred-day ‘honeymoon’. He must deploy EU Cohesion funds for county-hospital upgrades, digital cadasters and pothole-free national roads – projects that people can touch before the 2026 local elections.
Re-engage the diaspora constructively. Nearly 55% of Romanians voting abroad chose Simion, most of them being based in Western European countries. Many feel abandoned by consulates, gouged by fees and mocked by mainland media. An honest outreach strategy – through more dialogue and opportunities to return to Romania – can chip away at resentment.
Maintain the civic coalition. NGOs, liberal parties, ethnic-minority associations and business federations that rallied for Dan must stay networked, not dissolve into familiar micro-feuds. The next test could be parliamentary elections or a disinformation spike over Ukraine. Preparedness beats improvisation.
Europe Day, Every Day
These presidential elections framed the choice starkly: either in favour of Romania’s European integration as a liberal democracy, or a mirage of Ro-exit meant to install a sort of “sovereignty” scripted in Moscow. Romanian voters chose Europe and democracy – again. Yet Russia’s power in the region has never relied on majority support; it thrives on confusion, exhaustion and on a populist bloc ready to chant Russian propaganda. Battling these tendencies is a marathon, not a sprint. The good news is that a civic immune system clearly exists, and Romania’s democracy works better than ever. It mobilized 11 million Romanians to elect between a math prodigy and a TikTok populist. They made the right choice. Now the task is to keep that immune system healthy and safe. Just because we won the battle of 18 May, it does not mean that Russia’s hybrid war came to an end. Nicușor Dan’s win was a sharp defeat for Moscow, but new disinformation waves are already forming. We must fight every day – on every screen and in every conversation – to keep Romania, and the region, anchored in an open, democratic and rules-based Europe. Democracy survives not through one heroic Sunday, but through millions of small acts of attention every day. We need to stay vigilant, sceptical, yet engaged. Miracles do happen, but they take time, patience, and sustained effort.
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Claudia Bădulescu is a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), linked to the Institute of European Studies (IEE). Her research explores the administrative reforms and the democratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989. She also works on the european integration process. […]
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mai 19, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 19th May 2025. Link to the original article in Romanian: Mândri că suntem europeni. MAGA ar face bine să nu mai mizeze în UE pe marionetele lui Putin – Comunitatea Liberala.
Nicușor Dan secured a clear victory in the May 18th election after running a strong campaign in which his opponent made numerous missteps.
Truth be told, G. Simion wasn’t up to the fight. He ran off after a first face-to-face debate in which he was clearly outmatched by the mayor of Bucharest. He acted arrogantly, claiming it was his opponent who had to chase after him. From there, he came up with all kinds of excuses to dodge further debates. He traveled to several countries to meet with fellow populist leaders, hoping to look like part of a broader European revolt against EU institutions. Reckless statements complemented his disappearance from the public eye, along with photos taken alongside other far-right extremists. When he wasn’t announcing plans to fire 500,000 public servants or halt all aid to Ukraine, Simion embarrassed himself by telling Parisian journalists that France is a dictatorship like Iran and that the country might vanish in 20–30 years because the French apparently have nothing better to do than change children’s genders.
Simion’s detachment from reality was stunning. The AUR candidate stuck to his line that he would “bring justice” so that Georgescu could become president. Even as polls closed, he insisted that it wasn’t him or N. Dan who had won — but Georgescu. We leave behind a campaign in which irrationality was applauded.
Fortunately, most of the public remained clear-headed. Some woke up only in the second round — that’s the best explanation for the extraordinary turnout among the diaspora. Yesterday, no fewer than 1.64 million out of the total 11.6 million voters cast their ballots at nearly a thousand polling stations abroad. As this trend emerged, it wasn’t clear whether Simion had any fresh supporters abroad, or whether he’d already burned through them in the first round, where he captured 60% of the vote. Ultimately, most of those who voted only in the second round were people determined to block the ultra-nationalist drift. A special mention goes to the voters in the Republic of Moldova: nearly 160,000 Moldovans holding Romanian citizenship cast their votes and overwhelmingly backed N. Dan. For them, it was easy to spot Simion for what he is — a Kremlin puppet.
It’s also worth noting that political parties played a minor role in this campaign. That should give both the old guard and the newcomers something to think about. Nicușor Dan is the first independent to win the most complex political contest in the country. He is also the third mayor — after Traian Băsescu and Klaus Iohannis — to reach the presidency. This confirms that the public tends to favor local political figures over prime ministers or parliamentarians — people who can’t hide behind their mandates, and must either deliver or fail publicly.
There’s much to be said about campaign financing, how the media and electoral institutions managed the elections, and so on — but there will be time for such analysis.
What matters now is a return to rational governance.
The first priority is forming an executive. The new president will be the architect of the governing majority. It’s highly likely that the PNL, USR, and UDMR will cooperate. It’s less clear whether the PSD will want to stay in power without naming the prime minister. The internal crisis brewing in that party — made worse by Ciolacu’s ostrich-like strategy in the final round — threatens to trigger political tremors. Let’s hope they don’t lead to early elections. That’s the last thing we need right now.
There’s also a need for a budget that takes into account the deficit caused by Ciolacu’s recklessness, the constraints of international financial markets, confidence in the national currency, the urgency of tapping into what’s left of the EU recovery funds (PNRR), and the decisions set to come from next month’s NATO summit regarding defense spending for the next 2–3 years.
Third, the new president carries a heavy burden: reconciliation. The societal tension generated by nationalist outbursts, an excessively long electoral period, the near-total abandonment of the anti-corruption fight, and the political involvement of gangsters, mercenaries, and Russian operatives must be defused—with tact, patience, and dialogue.
Finally, N. Dan’s victory is yet another failure for MAGA’s European forays — this time, backing a candidate openly aligned with the Kremlin. The naïveté of the American president and the ignorance of his advisers regarding European affairs have led to the paradoxical situation where the Republican administration supported far-right parties in Europe during the early months of Trump’s second term. The failure of their support for AfD in Germany should’ve served as a wake-up call in Washington. It didn’t. So here we are, in Bucharest, with Trump’s envoy to Greenland and the Greenlandic bricklayer who leads the movement to sell that Danish territory to the U.S.
MAGA would do well to stop betting in Europe on figures who understand democratic politics about as well as I understand the Greenlandic language.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mai 5, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 5th of May 2025. Link to the original article in Romanian: E mai rău ca-n noiembrie? Da, un pic, dar poate fi bine… – Comunitatea Liberala.
Yesterday, I went to the polls. The number of voters was slightly higher than on November 24. Not by much, and the increase was recorded abroad. However, it’s not clear whether more people showed up because they were traveling abroad, taking advantage of the May 1st holiday, or if they were new voters, outraged by one thing or another.
The pollsters were way off. We’re used to that. But yesterday, they projected George Simion at 30%, and he ended up with ten percent more. This profession needs serious reform. To be fair, they had the candidates in second and third place neck and neck, which is exactly how it turned out.
What’s most noteworthy, politically speaking, is that the sovereigntist candidate managed to recover all of Călin Georgescu’s voter base and even surpass it slightly: their combined score was 38.5% in November, while now the AUR leader secured 41%.
He will face Nicușor Dan in the runoff, who garnered over a percent and a half more than what Lasconi had gathered five months ago. The gap between him and Crin Antonescu, who finished third, is much wider than what the USR leader had over Ciolacu: it resembles the gap between Băsescu and Geoană in the 2009 final.
The performance of the governing coalition’s candidate was disastrous: despite backing from three parties that had received about 43% in the presidential and legislative elections, he couldn’t even gather half of that now. This is also Iohannis’s fault, of course, since Antonescu’s nomination happened while the former president still had influence over the ruling coalition.
Lasconi came in fifth, receiving even less than what critics who called for her withdrawal had predicted: not even 3%. Her removal from the USR leadership is likely imminent, as her behavior lately has been completely irrational.
The arbiter of the final round will likely be Victor Ponta, the former Social Democratic prime minister who has turned to Trumpism. It’s predictable that he’ll either go for the leadership of PSD or start a new left-wing party, since it’s clear that Prime Minister Ciolacu is completely discredited—after placing third in the November presidential race, he now backed a presidential candidate who wasn’t even from PSD. A perfect chameleon, Ponta could align with either the nationalist camp or the other one, because he has energy to burn.
Negotiations to form a pro-European majority will be complicated not only by Ponta’s position and the campaign jabs between Antonescu and N. Dan, but also—or maybe especially—by uncertainties within the PNL camp. Likely, part of the solution will depend on Bolojan’s skill in navigating the current turbulent waters. He performed very honorably as interim, but it’s clear he would be a major asset to the government as prime minister. That’s a kind of political capital that could be put to great use for “our country,” as he likes to say.
So, we may end up with a showdown between the duos N. Dan – I. Bolojan and G. Simion – C. Georgescu.
I hasten to say I am just as sure the current mayor will become president as I was that he would make it to the runoff.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mai 5, 2025By Claudia Bădulescu, Free University of Brussels, Institute of European Studies.
Shortly after one o’clock on the morning of May 5, 2025, the Central Electoral Bureau in Bucharest released near‑final figures from the first round of Romania’s presidential election. They read like the script of an improbable political thriller. George Simion, the thirty‑eight‑year‑old leader of the ultra‑nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), had captured a little over forty per cent of the valid ballots – around 3.6 million votes, more than any extremist candidate has ever received in post‑communist Romania. Reformist capital‑city mayor Nicușor Dan trailed far behind on roughly twenty‑one per cent, his slender advantage over the governing coalition’s veteran nominee Crin Antonescu measured in the tens of thousands. Former prime minister Victor Ponta limped in with thirteen per cent, while the once‑celebrated pro‑European hopeful Elena Lasconi, deserted by her own party, slipped below three per cent.
For seasoned Romania‑watchers the result felt less like an ordinary swing than a tectonic fault opening beneath the political establishment. In the annulled vote of November 2024 Simion had struggled to reach 1.3 million ballots, running as the understudy to hard‑line ideologue Călin Georgescu. Now, five months later, he had single‑handedly exceeded the combined November tally of the entire far‑right camp and opened a yawning 1.8‑million‑vote chasm over Dan. The turnout – just under fifty‑four per cent – was almost identical to last year’s poll, which means the far right did not profit from a sudden electoral surge but from a massive reallocation of disaffected voters.
How Did We Get Here?
Traditional explanations for radical‑right breakthroughs rarely apply cleanly to Romania. The country is not facing a migration crisis; less than two per cent of its resident population are foreign nationals, while millions of Romanians themselves live abroad. The macro‑economy has been expanding steadily – GDP grew 2.7 per cent in 2024 and unemployment hovers near a record low. Eurobarometer surveys routinely rank Romanians among the most EU‑friendly peoples in Central Europe. Yet Simion’s campaign thrived on an incendiary cocktail of ultra‑sovereigntist rhetoric, anti‑Brussels grievance and barely veiled admiration for Vladimir Putin’s defiance of the West.
Three deeper dynamics help explain the paradox. First, after three and a half decades of alternation between the Social‑Democrats (PSD) and various liberal avatars (PNL, USR, splinters) many voters no longer distinguish between parties. Corruption scandals, recycled personalities and the grand PSD‑PNL coalition forged in 2023 created the impression of a self‑serving cartel. The constitutional court’s decision last December to annul the first‑round result on grounds of ‘foreign interference’ fed a growing conviction that the establishment would bend rules to keep outsiders at bay. Simion framed his bid as a popular uprising against a perfidious elite: the slogan “Nu ne furați viitorul!” – Don’t steal our future – became omnipresent on social media.
Second, AUR perfected digital grievance entrepreneurship. TikTok, once a back‑channel for teenage dance clips, is now Romania’s loudest political megaphone. Party strategists saturated the platform with short videos featuring Simion praying before Orthodox icons, live‑streaming confrontations with police or proclaiming solidarity with striking miners. Independent researchers counted more than eighty‑five thousand clips tagged with pro‑Simion hashtags during the forty‑eight hours surrounding election day; rivals combined produced fewer than fifteen thousand. Algorithms rewarded the emotional intensity of the content: folk tunes, tricolour flags, denunciations of “globalist traitors”. Mainstream television, still influential among older voters, struggled to counter the viral wave.
Third, the diaspora turned decisively towards radical protest. By Sunday night more than 970,000 Romanians had voted abroad, a historic turnout that is 150,000 more than the number registered in November 2024. Exit‑poll data show that nearly six in ten overseas ballots went to Simion. Interviews conducted by HotNews correspondents in Malaga and Vienna reveal a potent blend of economic resentment (“our children are born in debt”) and civilisational pride (“we have seen how Europeans live and want the same standards at home”). AUR has spent years cultivating diaspora networks through cultural associations, church events and targeted Telegram channels; the payoff became visible on Sunday night.
The Candidate of TikTok Nationalism
George Simion’s personal trajectory encapsulates the new style of Romanian populism. Raised in a modest family in Focșani, he earned notoriety as an activist for reunification with Moldova, organising disruptive protests across the Prut River. In parliament he blended pugnacious street theatre – storming elections offices, recording live from plenary rows – with performative piety. His embrace of Călin Georgescu, suspended last year after the Kremlin‑linked influencer was barred from running, allowed Simion to inherit a ready‑made mythos of spiritual restoration and ecological nationalism. The imagery is carefully choreographed: embroidered shirts, medieval fortresses, sometimes a horse. Yet the movement’s organisational backbone is ruthlessly modern: micro‑targeted Facebook groups, data‑harvesting websites and a merchandise line that ships worldwide.
The campaign’s ideological palette mixes Orthodox mysticism, conspiracy theories about Western decadence, promises of debt relief for young families, denunciations of “foreign‑owned banks” and calls for “strategic neutrality” in the Ukraine war. Of over thirty‑three distinct policy pledges, none was accompanied by costing. It hardly mattered. The emotional appeal lay in a single refrain: Romania, the stolen homeland, must be reclaimed.
Nicușor Dan’s Narrow Road
Facing Simion on May 18 is the softly spoken mathematician‑turned‑mayor of Bucharest. Dan campaigns on technocratic competence: repairing tramlines, digitising permits, protecting urban green spaces. He won the capital in 2020 and in 2024 by uniting fragmented centre‑right clans; replicating that feat nationally is exponentially harder. For more than a decade Dan has embodied an anti‑corruption, pro‑EU civic spirit, yet he lacks a nationwide party machine. His hope rests on a rapid convergence of three electorates: Antonescu’s ageing provincial voters, Ponta’s disgruntled left‑leaners and the scattered liberal middle class who backed Lasconi. If every one of those ballots slid effortlessly into Dan’s column, he could reach fifty‑seven per cent – mathematically sufficient. Romanian politics, however, rarely obeys Euclidean logic.
One immediate hurdle is apathy. First‑round participation was under fifty‑five per cent; Simion’s devotees are unlikely to stay home, whereas centrist voters often do. Another obstacle lies abroad: Dan lost the diaspora by thirty‑three points. His team must now race through parishes and community halls in Madrid, Milan or Munich, persuading émigrés that a Simion presidency could jeopardise the visa‑free mobility they cherish. The PSD‑PNL apparatus has promised to mobilise its mayors for Dan, but the alliance’s grass‑roots enthusiasm is tepid; local barons fear being punished next year if they openly campaign for a candidate who spent years lambasting their patronage networks.
Europe Holds Its Breath
The shock in Bucharest reverberated instantly in EU capitals. AUR’s programme envisages referendums on ‘repatriating sovereignty’ from Brussels, re‑negotiating green‑transition targets and suspending arms deliveries to Ukraine. While the Romanian president cannot unilaterally quit NATO or the EU, he chairs the Supreme Defence Council, appoints the anti‑corruption prosecutor and wields veto authority over legislation. A Simion presidency would thus place an unpredictable gatekeeper at the eastern flank of both unions at a moment when Russian hybrid pressure is intensifying.
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Claudia Bădulescu is a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), linked to the Institute of European Studies (IEE). Her research explores the administrative reforms and the democratic consolidation in Central and Eastern Europe since 1989. She also works on the european integration process. […]
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avril 7, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 4th of April 2025. Link to the original article in Romanian: Nori negri la startul campaniei – Comunitatea Liberala.
We have five candidates for Cotroceni who could, in principle, exceed 10%. In alphabetical order, they are Crin Antonescu, Nicușor Dan, Elena Lasconi, Victor Ponta, and George Simion. The pre-campaign period has changed the November landscape.
First of all, out of the three clearly separated electoral blocs from the fall – the governmental, the sovereigntist, and the liberal – only the second has managed to put forward a single candidate. Anamaria Gavrilă, leader of POT, withdrew from the race to allow Simion to also claim the votes given to Călin Georgescu on November 24. Together, the two had gathered 36.8% back then. Simion now appears far from having recovered all those votes.
Secondly, a coalition has formed which we might call Seychelles, if we consider the colors of the parties it comprises: PSD (red) – PNL (yellow-blue) – UDMR (green-red-white). It presents a new candidate – Antonescu – rather than one of the three who had previously represented each party in the current government. The unity of this bloc is contested by Ponta, who is in fact seeking to gather the PSD vote and chip away at the sovereigntist one.
Meanwhile, Lasconi has remained the USR candidate, hoping to repeat her qualification from November 24 and make it to the much-dreamed-of final. Published polls place her at about half the percentage she received back then. Her supporters dispute this. They are now bitterly opposed to the USR founder, who entered the race attempting to gather not just USR votes, but also liberal ones – particularly from those who didn’t support Lasconi’s party in the European or parliamentary elections, instead choosing like-minded parties or independents.
It seems, then, that some tectonic plates are shifting, threatening to rattle the surface the Seychelles coalition portrays as an almost touristy paradise.
Three scenarios seem likely:
One, already presented by N. Dan as the darkest, is the scenario in which G. Simion and V. Ponta recover the sovereigntist and PSD vote (56% in the presidential and 55% in the parliamentary elections), split it almost equally, and face off in the final. Such a development would clearly lead to a PSD-AUR-SOS-POT government.
The second scenario is one in which one of the opponents of the AUR leader and the « dottore » gathers 30% to secure a spot in the final, uniting the liberal and USR electorate ahead of a runoff against either Simion or Ponta – assuming the two divide the PSD-sovereigntist electorate unequally. N. Dan would likely be closest to achieving this, but Antonescu doesn’t seem ready to let go of the fantasy of PSD support, and Lasconi doesn’t seem willing to make the same gesture Ludovic Orban made in November to allow her to reach the final. Thus, this scenario appears less likely than the first.
The third scenario involves C. Georgescu organizing a broad protest movement, asking his voters to spoil their ballots by writing his name on them. The idea is already circulating in sovereigntist circles. It is encouraged by those who interpreted the pro-Russian candidate’s silence as a refusal to support either Ponta or Simion. Such a protest would disrupt the political scene. Russian interference and TikTok would do the rest, and the result could be as unpredictable as last year’s Georgescu-Lasconi final.
Dark clouds loom over the political sky as the campaign begins. The problem is, we don’t know what kind of storm is brewing.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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avril 7, 2025By Antony Todorov, New Bulgarian University.
The head of the European Prosecutor’s Office, Laura Kövesi, has temporarily suspended Bulgarian representative Teodora Georgieva and even launched an investigation against her. This unusual move in such an EU institution has become the centre of a scandal in Bulgaria, involving a former investigator, a former prosecutor general, a current party leader, a current minister and several institutions.
The Bulgarian European Prosecutor was suspended due to threats against her in connection with the investigation into the misuse of European funds for the expansion of the gas storage facility in Chiren (near Pleven, Bulgaria). According to Georgieva, she is being threatened by MP Delyan Peevski, who is subject to sanctions for corruption by the US and the UK. The Bulgarian European Prosecutor stated that the MP had demanded a bribe of 20 million leva (10 mln. €) to arrange who would implement the project. Separately, there is also an accusation against officials for changing the technology in order to save and embezzle another 80-90 million leva (40-45 mln. €).
For his part, Delyan Peevski, a highly controversial political figure in Bulgaria, accused Georgieva of being elected to the post at the suggestion of another character, former investigator Petyo Petrov, nicknamed Pepi the Euro, who has been wanted by the investigation for a long time for multiple crimes. Moreover, the wanted investigator himself has filed a report with the prosecutor’s office that during the period 2019-2023 he gave Georgieva 10,000 leva per month. And Delyan Peevski threatened to sue her for perjury. In addition, he claims that she is the “personal prosecutor” of one of the leaders of the opposition and a sharp critic of the “Peevski model” Kiril Petkov.
The story also involves a connection with another dark figure of crime in Bulgaria – Martin Bozhanov, nicknamed the Notary, who seems to have worked together with Pepi the Euro. Bozhanov was killed by an unknown perpetrator in late January 2025, but became known as a man who could get someone out of prison, ruin someone else’s business, and provide an “umbrella” over someone else. Names from high politics came out of his presence, and his widow is an employee of the Main Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP).
The scandal took on a new dimension with the publication of a hidden camera video allegedly of a meeting between Pepi the Euro and Teodora Georgieva. In fact, this does not look good and many believe that it is compromising material prepared to disqualify the Bulgarian European Prosecutor. However, Pepi the Euro himself, who recently returned to Bulgaria from Dubai after months of hiding from the prosecutor’s office, claims that such a meeting took place and that opportunities to influence specific court cases were discussed at it. And one more thing – a few days before the release of the video recordings, Teodora Georgieva’s mother died in a fire in her home under still unclear circumstances.
This whole story is not a script for an action movie on a crime theme. And although the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office claims that it is starting to carefully investigate all this, public opinion is again sceptical that anything will really be brought to light. The public is left with the impression that there is a well-developed criminal network for control and influence over the judicial system, for corruption of public officials, for fraud not only with European funds, for pressure on inconvenient judges and prosecutors, but also the presence of too many corrupt justice officials.
There is now some expectation among public opinion that the intervention of the European Public Prosecutor’s Office in this case will unravel some of the most dangerous and obvious manifestations of organized political corruption in Bulgaria. Because society as a whole does not believe that the current National Prosecutor’s Office and the current Supreme Judicial Council in Bulgaria, responsible for the career development of prosecutors and judges, will be able to do this. It remains to be seen whether the EU institution will now help Bulgarian citizens to believe that there can be real justice in the interests of the people.
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Antony Todorov is a political scientist and a professor at the New Bulgarian University. He was visiting teacher at ULB (Brussels) and at the University of Bucharest and president of the Bulgarian Political Science Association from 2001 to 2012. His research interests lie in democracy, party politics, and the study of elections. […]
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avril 4, 2025By Sean Hanley, University College London.
This contribution is drawn from an article written by Sean Hanley on his webiste. Be sure to subscribe to it if you want to be informed of his future contributions and to support his work.
Tony Barber’s weekly FT (Financial Times) column rounds up and examines Eastern Europe’s latest round of civic protest in Slovakia, Romania, Georgia, Serbia. It’s a mixed bag of regimes and issues. Two in the EU, two aspiring to join by stalled by illiberal governments, one with (Georgia) with the looming presence of Russian influence right next door and thousands of kilometres distant from the European heartlands.
The key takeaway, Barber says, is that there are countervailing liberal forces resisting various Kremlin-aligned illiberal governments – and doing so persistently – at least the nations’ capitals and cities. What’s more liberal civic nationalism is alive and well. But Barber is astute in noting, as academic researchers have, that this similar looking, urban middle class civic mobilisation is subtly different in countries which are, both politically and geographically in, different places.
Are watershed elections and the EU enough?
In Serbia, protests erupt over corruption and shrinking civic freedoms. These demonstrations are large but leaderless, demanding systemic reform rather than outright regime change. Protesters distrust opposition parties and electoral politics, avoiding engagement in formal structures. Unlike in other countries, they do not carry EU flags, reflecting a scepticism toward European institutions of a stalled candidate state. The government remains stable, bolstered by the EU’s preference for regional stability over democracy. The lesson is that politics so much more than just winning some future watershed election and “turning the tide of populism’ (tides always comes back in). Targeting the post-communist deep state, the oligarchical power structures is the wickeder problem.
In Slovakia, resistance has focused on Prime Minister Robert Fico’s autocratic drive against independent institutions following 2023 comeback: the winding up and re-forming of public TV, and pressure on NGOs. Protests see elections as a crucial battleground for change, unlike in Serbia, although as ever the precise vehicle capable of defeating Fico remains uncertain. Demonstrators strongly support the EU, aligning themselves with Europe’s perceived democratic norms. But public opinion remains split, with some backing NATO and European integration, while others favour neutrality or a more Russia-friendly stance of the kind backed by Fico.
Hungary’s protests, though smaller than those in Serbia, challenge Viktor Orbán’s deeply entrenched system of electoral autocracy and opposition suppression. Midway between Serbia and Slovak patterns, the opposition still engages in elections with the new TISZA party the strongest challenge to Orbán in years, but under an uneven playing field that fuels scepticism about whether real change is now possible through the ballot box. With Orbán’s control over the judiciary, security forces, and media, Hungary is unlikely to see a Poland-style opposition victory in 2025, as the system is designed to keep him in power. The EU is critical of Orbán, yet Hungarian protesters do not display the strong EU alignment seen in Slovakia, perhaps chastened by the years of failed EU leverage
Georgia faces unrest over rigged elections, creeping authoritarianism, and powerful Russian influence. Protests target the ruling Georgian Dream party, and while elections were rigged, opposition forces still see them as worth contesting. As in Slovakia backsliding is relatively new and illiberalism less entrenched. Protesters take the strong pro-EU stance, common would-be members state far from membership although the EU and (less surprisingly) the US have been largely inactive in offering support. With weak international backing, Georgia remains highly vulnerable to Russian interference, making its democratic future perhaps the most precarious.
Historical analogies fail to inform
Less convincing – or thought through – are FT’s tired historical analogies:
people [writes Tony Barber] are massing on the streets in the name of liberal ideals and national self-determination — seen as hijacked by bullying, self-serving autocrats — in a manner that recalls 1848 and also 1989, the year of the pro-democracy revolutions against communism.
History matters, but the existence of strong civic minded publics with a liberal national vision isn’t reason to reach for the history books.
We’ve been here before – and to very mixed effect.
1989 was itself compared to the 1848 “Springtime of Nations”, but its liberal revolutions – at least for a long interlude – succeeded while those of 1848 were snuffed out. The 2011 Arab Spring was compared to both 1989 and 1848 but largely lacked the liberalism and depended less on geopolitics than domestic authoritarian retrenchment.
Unlike 1848, today’s protests are unlikely to be directly crushed by external military intervention, and unlike 1989, they lack clear leadership and effective Western backing and are pushing back against democratic backsliding, not pushing for democracy in a situation of authoritarian collapse. Indeed, today’s autocrats are in many ways products of 1989, well entrenched and well capable of faking and manipulating democratic forms for deeply autocratic purposes, not the exhausted dynasts or communists of the past.
Historical parallels with 1848 and 1989 fall short. We are in new political territory. The shifting nature of democratic pushback—where mass protests, electoral struggles, and international disengagement intersect—suggest a different kind of contest, which – even if democratic defence leads to full blown democratic renewal – does not fit neatly into past revolutionary cycles.
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Sean Hanley is a full-time professor at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at University College of London. His research focuses on the transformation of established parties and the rise of anti-establishment parties in Central and Eastern Europe. […]
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avril 1, 2025By Vladimir Mitev, journalist.
This contribution was first published in Cross-border Talks and is re-published with the agreement of the author. Link to the original publication: The government of Rosen Zhelyazkov is a bridge to all – Cross-border Talks.
Boyko Borissov is again at the centre of the Bulgarian political system. All roads pass through him. The broad support for the government is a chance for legislation and reforms – but it faces difficulties as well.
The formation of new Bulgarian government has been accompanied in the Romanian media, in part, by comments that Bulgaria is yet another country in the region that is joining the group of countries led by Hungary and Slovakia that have a pro-Russian orientation. Thus, the interpretations about Bulgaria have entered into the popular cliché in Romania that Bulgarians are inherently Russophiles, without taking into account that the country is part of NATO and the EU or that there are other influential geopolitical vectors in its politics.
With this text, I try to suggest some guidelines that would allow looking at Bulgarian politics and society beyond the standard two-dimensional coordinate axis with two ends – West and East, and a constant pendulum-type movement between them. At this stage, I find more convincing a paradigm in which there are many more internal contradictions in the country, but also an aspiration for renewal, which, however, is often hindered by the fragmentation and polarisation of Bulgarian society. In such a situation, I hope that Bulgaria’s neighbours in the EU, and countries in the region in general, will in time begin to cast less aspersions on the Bulgarians because of their alleged “awkward” foreign policy ties, and will increasingly gain the understanding and the tools to connect transformatively with the Bulgarians. I don’t believe anyone is inherently Western or Eastern in their beliefs or essence – we live in a real world with specific problems whose solutions point us in one direction or another.
In fact, the new government of Rosen Zhelyazkov follows a classic formula for the Bulgarian state to be a bridge between different national and international forces.
There are both ministers who come from the NGO sector (an example in this respect is Deputy Prime Minister Tomislav Donchev, who is career-linked with the Open Society Foundation, but also Interior Minister Daniel Mitov, who was executive director of the Democracy Foundation), and representatives of populist parties (a classic example in this respect is “There is such a people”, but the Bulgarian Socialist Party also relied until recently on “conservative-left”, Orbanist ideology). The leader of the main party in it – GERB-SDS – Boyko Borissov, is on excellent terms, both with the President of the European Commission, and with the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, not to mention Recep Erdogan. In parliament, the government enjoys the support of some political currents among the Bulgarian Turks. And although some politicians from the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left have a Russophile profile, the government says it will continue to fulfil its commitments to Ukraine.
All these and other signs testify that the Zhelyazkov government is trying to be nice to everyone. And this is not only because the archetype of the modern Bulgarian state is a bridge (and we can see this archetype in all recent stable cabinets – from Borisov 3, through Petkov to Denkov/Gabriel).
For years the Bulgarian state has needed reform and modernisation, for which it needs broad support. But the transitional period the world was in after the war in Ukraine and during the war in the Middle East made it difficult for the Bulgarian political elite to find a consensus on how to adjust to the political winds blowing in the region and the world. This has caused long periods of caretaker governments in recent years. After the US, British and other elections passed, the Bulgarian political elites found the formula of the Zhelyazkov cabinet.
The Zhelyazkov cabinet – composition and intentions
Like the Petkov cabinet (December 2020 – August 2021), Rosen Zhelyazkov’s government contains small parties that often create conflicts around themselves. So it can easily be modified if necessary or simply fall apart if a new major dividing line arises in international relations. The likelihood of greater tensions between the US and the EU leads to growing insecurity in the region – and it could force changes in the Zhelyazkov government.
The Zhelyazkov cabinet has vectors in different directions, precisely because stability is needed so that reforms can be implemented and legislation passed after a long period of gridlock in the state and its administration. At the formation of the government in parliament, Rosen Zhelyazkov himself said that the government programme would be ready in a month – i.e. in mid-February. He only briefly outlined some of the political highlights of his cabinet.
One of them is joining the eurozone. Bulgaria is close to meeting the last requirement for joining the euro area – the price level.
In Zhelyazkov’s words, the government will prioritise the quality of life of the people with a focus on education, healthcare and the development of the labour market. Among the important tasks he added ensuring the rule of law, sustainable finances, a balanced budget, as well as accelerating the implementation of the National Recovery and Sustainability Plan, coordinated family policies, a sustained increase in investment in research and innovation with an ambition to reach 2% of GDP.
Zhelyazkov also outlined as important tasks the guarantee of energy security as well as national security through the modernisation of the Bulgarian army and the enhancement of defence capabilities, active actions to expand the European space with the Western Balkans, decisive actions to tackle the crisis of waterlessness and guaranteeing access to drinking water in the affected areas.
Crises and incidents greet the government in its first weeks
Two weeks after Rosen Zhelyazkov and his government took office, the difficulties in its activities are already visible. It had to present a mini-legislative programme for parliament to work on until the announcement of the government’s full programme in mid-February. But so far this has not happened.
There are suspicions that the 2025 budget is looking at a 9% deficit, so the draft budget has been withdrawn from discussions and will be presented in an updated version probably in mid-February 2025.
In foreign policy terms, Bulgaria has resolved (with the help of Middle Eastern mediators) the crisis with its Houthi hostage sailors. But a new international scandal arose after the Bulgarian ship Vezhen was detained by Sweden on suspicion of committing an act of sabotage by severing an international cable in the Baltic Sea. Eventually the Swedish prosecutors didn’t formulate accusations and let the ship leave for the open sea.
These and other crises show that the Zhelyazkov government’s task will be difficult. It may have parliamentary support. But it is clearly difficult to stack the various political tendencies and drive the state machinery, after the administration was in a semi-stasis for a long time during Dimitar Glavchev’s caretaker government.
Borissov is back with great force in Bulgaria’s political system
Since 2020, when anti-corruption protests erupted against the stableocracy of Boyko Borissov and influential businessman and politician Delyan Peevski, Bulgarian society has theoretically been making attempts to modernise its social model. An influential anti-corruption trend has emerged in Bulgarian politics, represented by the We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria formations. Although they ruled during the Petkov (December 2021-August 2022) and Denkov (June 2023-April 2024) cabinets, the reforms they carried out were not significant. The balances in the judiciary do not appear to have changed. The constitutional changes that saw anti-corruption parties rule in collaboration with those they considered symbols of corruption, Borissov and Peevski, were criticised for the difficulties they created in finding a prime minister for a caretaker government and were partially overturned by the Constitutional Court.
Ultimately, the politicians of these parties themselves never articulated a clear vision of what exactly “change” means in Bulgarian conditions after the fall of the Borisov 3 government. Currently, prominent cadres of the anti-corruption parties are accused by the Bulgarian prosecutor’s office – the former prime minister and leader of We Continue the Change Kiril Petkov in connection with the illegal arrest of Boyko Borissov, and his former chief of staff Lena Borislavova for document crimes.
Indeed, in recent years, Bulgarians’ salaries and pensions have been rising. But the societal model is still extremely dominated by people and groups with financial resources. Unlike Romania, Bulgarian society is almost devoid of grassroots organisations and social movements. That is, change from the bottom up is not encouraged and cannot happen, not least because many people find it pointless to develop civic activity. They believe that the only change can come from access to certain political or financial power. That reinforces the belief that in Bulgaria change can only come from the top down, from the people and structures with power resources.
In this context, since 2020, the Bulgarian political wheel of fortune has come full circle. And now again Boyko Borissov is at the centre of the political system, on good terms with everyone. And again he is the European face of Bulgaria, since during the European elections in 2024, Ursula von der Leyen herself came to Plovdiv to express support for him and to receive support from him.
During Trump’s first term, Borissov managed to win his favour through a military order for 8 F-16 Block 70 fighter jets. The first of these fighters was handed over to Bulgaria on 31 January 2025.
In the new era of Trump, Borissov’s talent for being on good terms with everyone will certainly benefit the Bulgarian state. But it still faces the challenges of modernization and reform, not just managing an aging status quo.
Hypotheses for knowing and understanding the Bulgarian rebus
In this context, it would be great if the Romanian interest in Bulgaria and Bulgarians were better able to identify the forces that can transform Bulgarian social reality for good, and to connect with them. It is not possible for every attempt to change the citizens of Bulgarian society to be tamed forever by the well-entrenched interests within it. It is logical that over time it evolves towards greater complexity. And to unravel it will require concepts and language to name the realities.
The government of Rosen Zhelyazkov is an opportunity to observe and read this “complexity” or “ambiguity”. And these are not just Bulgarian phenomena in the age of Trump. Romanian politics is also beginning to be filled with bridge people. Presidential candidate Crin Antonescu is the husband of a former Romanian EU commissioner, but he has also historically been an ally of the face of sovereigntism in the Social Democratic Party, Victor Ponta. Another presidential candidate, Nicusor Dan, comes from NGO circles, but by his own statements and actions has nothing conservative in his views – for example, he has long put off getting the COVID vaccine.
So the phenomenon of politicians or government-bridges is not something exclusively Bulgarian. The challenge is to see in them the potential for new experience, not the status quo from which we want to break away. Will Rosen Zhelyazkov give us a chance to see in him something more than “GERB with a human face”? What we will see also depends on our ability not to see the world as black and white, but to read the shades of grey.
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Vladimir Mitev is a Bulgarian and Romanian-speaking journalist. He is correspondent of Radio Romania for Bulgaria and is an editor at the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria. […]
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mars 31, 2025By Sergiu Mișcoiu, Babeș-Bolyai University, interviwed on 29/03/2025.
This interview was first published in adevarul.ro. Link to the original interview in Romanian: De ce nu vrea România să trimită trupe în Ucraina? „Există teama că Rusia ar putea găsi un pretext, un casus belli”| ANALIZA | adevarul.ro.
The coalition of European countries that want to help Ukraine has given up on the idea of sending peacekeeping troops and has come up with a new formula: reassurance troops. Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu explains the difference between the two concepts and the effects for Romania of the refusal to send troops.
The European leaders met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Paris on Thursday, March 27, to discuss ceasefire negotiations and military support for Kiev.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his Estonian counterpart Hanno Pevkur signaled their willingness to help secure peace in Ukraine with ground troops, at least in theory, Politico reports.
Estonian Defense Minister Pevkur stressed the importance of clarifying the mandate under which the troops will be deployed: “When our troops are there – German, Estonian, French, British troops – then these troops will be fixed there and there will be a temptation for Russia to immobilize us there and then test us elsewhere,” Pevkur said.
However, in the face of Russia’s categorical refusal to accept peacekeeping troops, the Coalition of states willing to help Ukraine has found an alternative – the so-called reassurance troops, which President Macron emphasized are not « peacekeeping troops. »
In the context of maintaining a sustainable truce in Ukraine, which type of troops do you think would be more effective, peacekeeping troops or reassurance troops?
It depends on what the agreement will look like. We are still very far from a peace agreement. We don’t know what it will look like. We don’t know what Russia will accept. These reassurance troops are the option when Russia is not very open to accepting peacekeeping troops.
They appear as a form of guaranteeing Ukraine’s security. But if there is a peace plan and this peace plan works, it would be much more logical to have peacekeeping troops rather than reassurance troops.
It is still very, very early to discuss the plan itself because it has not yet been accepted by Russia, and we do not know its details. For now, Europeans are preparing scenarios and possible options, but it is clear that there is no unanimity regarding the sending of troops, the idea of sending troops in itself, and how they should look and what mandate they should have.
Why was the decision made to move from peacekeeping troops, which were initially discussed, to reassurance troops?
Because of Russia’s outright opposition, which has repeatedly stated that it would not want Western troops on this demarcation territory, and more importantly, Russia has also stated multiple times that it would prefer an international peacekeeping force, meaning troops from other parts of the world, similar to the UN’s « Blue Helmets. » These would have a different mandate and behavior, not having a pro-Ukrainian stance, as Russia suspects Western troops would have had if they were on Ukrainian territory. Therefore, Russia’s hostility towards the presence of troops from NATO member countries, even if they were called peacekeeping troops, led to this second plan, which is much more realistic regarding Ukraine’s security than peacekeeping.
Why do you think some countries, including Romania, do not want to send either reassurance troops or peacekeeping troops?
Because Romania, but also Poland, for example, feels doubly vulnerable, having a large border with Ukraine and thus being at the forefront of exposure to Russia. They fear that, for example, incidents that could occur between peacekeeping troops, in which Romanians or Poles might participate, and the regular army, civilians, or pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine, could lead to drastic measures from Russia. Russia could find a pretext to threaten Romania’s national security. It could be a pretext, a casus belli (reason for war) with Romania and Poland directly, which is much harder to happen with countries that are far away, without a direct border to the conflict zone. I believe this is primarily where this caution comes from.
Do you think this refusal, so to speak, comes with diplomatic costs?
No, I believe this continues the way Romania has had a relationship with the war in Ukraine over time, showing support for Ukraine but maintaining considerable caution regarding direct exposure to the conflict. And consequences, if Romania were the only country in this position, of course, there could be some repercussions from Western countries. But Romania is not alone; for example, the Dutch parliament voted against similar measures, and other countries are in the same situation.
I think the French and the British, who are the main supporters of this « Coalition of the Will, » as it is called, will consider things in a more realistic manner, so I don’t think there will be major consequences.
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Sergiu Mișcoiu is a professor and researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, specialist of nation-building processes, political transitions and transformations in CEE and francophone Africa. He is also Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and of the Centre for African Studies. […]
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mars 28, 2025Interview led by Vladmir Mitev and Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat in November 2024 with Georgi Stefanov, an expert on transition issues and climate change-related policies for 15 years in European institutions.
This interview was first published in Cross-border Talks and is used with the agreement of the interviewers. Link to the original interview : Georgi Stefanov: Due to permanent political crisis, Bulgaria just cannot deliver the green transition reforms – Cross-border Talks.
V. M. : Vladimir Mitev, M. K. F. : Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat and G. S. : Georgi Stefanov.
M. K. F. : You co-authored a document called Mission Energy Transition, in which you listed many potential challenges and problems for a just transition in Bulgaria – from the national roadmap to a number of issues at the local level. One year after the publication, what are your thoughts? Which of the challenges have been solved or are on a good way to be solved. What has changed for the better and what has not changed at all?
G. S. : That’s a very difficult question, because we are in a permanent political crisis. This has also affected the institutional and political ambitions of the transformation of the coal regions in Bulgaria. Unfortunately, after the transformation process started about four or five years ago, we are not really moving forward at the moment.
We have an agreement with the European Commission that they will only approve the Bulgarian transition plans if we manage to implement the reforms under the national Resilience and Recovery Plan, which are linked to decarbonisation of the whole Bulgarian economy. But we also have a very large amount of EU public funds from different sources involved in the decarbonisation process. Apart from the national Resilience and Recovery Plan, these are operational programmes and modernisation funds. In total, we have more than seven billion euros for this process for the current program period and the coming years.
However, last year we failed three times to adopt the so-called climate roadmap, the key reform under the Resilience and Recovery Plan. So far, the European Commission has not said anything about Bulgaria’s just transition plans. Given the aforementioned failure, I am afraid that they would not allow Bulgaria to open up the measures related to investments.
Only two parts of the Just Transition plan are currently operational. The first is the mapping of the skills of workers who would be affected by the transformation of the coal sector. In this part, money is going indirectly and directly to the trade unions to map the skills and wishes of workers, particularly in the coal regions. The other measures are the energy efficiency measures and the renovation of buildings. All the other measures, which were to create new jobs and new economic activity, are not in operation, but we expect some new measures to start in the spring of 2025. Especially important are those that create new jobs. A few weeks ago the management committee of the regional development programme, which is basically responsible for the implementation of all the cohesion funds or the regional development plus the Just Transition Fund here in Bulgaria, started again to change the objectives and milestones of the Just Transition Fund, as well as the timing of transition-related activities.
As a result, workers and the entire local communities, especially in Pernik and Bobov Dol – our two smaller coal regions – are suffering a lot. They have been relying on the potential funds and programmes for their regions. And while the just transition funds go directly to the coal regions and might be used to fund dedicated activities, the municipalities cannot use them, because the National Assembly has not adopted the climate roadmap. In September 2024, the government tried again to adopt the climate roadmap through the National Assembly – but they failed again.
We really need a clear direction and a clear commitment. We need to know what is going to be done year by year. Only this way the measures applied within the just transition framework would be properly aligned with everything else. And then nobody will be left behind in the process of decarbonising the coal region. Instead, we see right-wing populist parties using the issue of just transition to make a political scandal. They are stopping the process and we are nowhere in the process of reviewing and changing the just transition plans, indicators and milestones. They should be proposed by Bulgaria. So far this process has only taken the opinion of stakeholders. I’m 90% sure that they haven’t finished it and sent it to the Commission.
M. K. F. : Is there no pressure from the European Commission on Bulgaria to meet its commitments?
G. S. : This may change as soon as in January 2025 – because we are talking about losing money. The Just Transition Fund is structured separately from modernisation or Cohesion Fund. We may lose money again, because we have a specific budget for each year for all the coal regions, not just for Bulgaria. This is how this money is structured. And what is Bulgaria doing? There is not even a chance of forming a government after the last elections we held, not to mention any political ambitions.
M. K. F. : If there is an unwillingness on the part of politicians to move forward, is there any kind of pressure from below, for instance from the private or from the civil society? After all, the private sector involved in coal regions must be aware that change is imminent?
G. S. : Not really. The only progressive and ambitious representatives of the various stakeholders are the environmental NGOs. But they are not powerful enough. At the same time, the trade unions are playing quite irrational games, trying to create a kind of scandal that the European Green Deal is dead. They say we don’t need to phase out coal, that climate change is a global conspiracy. They put a kind of spice on the story from all sides. And in the end it seems that they only want to have the money – I’m talking about 150 million leva from the JTF.
M. K. F. : Is no one interested in reskilling the workers in the coal regions so that their potential is not lost? These are educated people with a technical background. Alternative branches of industry could have been developed instead of coal-related activities. This is one of the essential moments of the just transition concept…
G. S. : So far, in order to shut the trade unions up, the Ministry of Regional Development has tasked the trade unions with reskilling the workers and also granted them direct funding to accomplish the task. The trade union structures are to do it – and we are talking about thousands of interviews with people to be potentially reskilled – of course with external support.
However, the biggest power of the trade unions in Bulgaria is in their membership, especially in the Stara Zagora region. And if we count how many members they have and how much they get per year from their membership fees, we see that the Ministry of Regional Government has given the trade unions the equivalent of membership fees for the next 10 years.
In fact, the trade unions have also failed the people. They failed many times to help unemployed people to get jobs. They have spent hundreds of millions in recent years building training centres in regions with high unemployment. These efforts did not bring about a substantial change and, based on these experiences and previous results, I claim they are going to fail at the reskilling task, too. I am involved in a number of Facebook groups, where miners and trade union people are also present, and I discover there is a lot of propaganda and populism there. At the COVID-19 times, these groups grew a lot. Many times I saw people there laughing at the risk-taking and roadmapping of the skills of miners.
This will mean that Bulgaria will lose 5% of the total amount of just transition funding. That is what I expect.
V. M. : Aren’t the trade unions different in their positions? Podkrepa is usually seen as more conservative and eurosceptic, if you like, but KNSB seems to be more open to the transition.
G. S. : They changed their position after they received the 150 million leva for mapping the skills of the workers.
I was also a trade union leader for three years in my previous job. In Bulgaria trade unions and the Church are the two structures that are not required to fill in financial reports. They cannot be responsible under the financial law, so they are independent from the state – a state in the state. Nobody can keep track of what happens with the funding they received. And while KNSB claims to do their best in reskilling, they have never seriously tried to explain to their members that climate change is real and that we all had to act because there is a threat to people and nature, like the European, and also global, unions explain and trying to protect their members from the biggest crisis – climate change.
Instead, conspiracy theories about climate change not being real flourish in Bulgaria. And the politicians do not want to touch it, because they are afraid of being attacked by right-wing populist parties. Nobody puts climate change on the agenda. Nobody even wants to say that the commitment for the ETS sector for 2030 is minus 62%.
If this was said to the people in a clear way, they would have understood the situation. I am sure of that – based on my experience. I have been working for 18 years on climate change issues and almost 10 years on just transition issues. I have explained the reform process aimed at cutting 40% of CO2 emissions, being at that time the head of the political cabinet of the deputy prime minister for climate policy in Bulgaria. All the ambitious reforms included in The National Resilience and Recovery Plan of Bulgaria, which should modernise Bulgaria’s economy and decarbonise the carbon-intensive sectors, has passed through my hands. In May 2022, when Ursula von der Leyen came to Bulgaria, she said that Bulgaria’s National Resilience and Recovery Plan was the most ambitious and the greenest – in the whole of Europe.
V. M. : Which is no longer the case…
G. S. : Of course. After the changes in the plan, it is no more the most ambitious and the greenest. And the ambitious changes are still left to be done. 56% of the money from the National Resilience and Recovery Plan should be spent in different sectors of the economy to help the decarbonisation processes. The coal story is just the core, the main problem in terms of emissions levels, but definitely not the difficult part.
It should be said at this moment that Bulgarian coal mines are low energy valued, with low energy production capacity. It is quite a technical miracle that any energy is produced from them! And still, I do not think that dealing with the coal sector is the hardest task that we will face. The hardest part will come when the government starts to deal with the so-called Social Climate Fund, which basically means reducing CO2 emissions from cars and buildings and supporting poor people. That will affect close to half of the Bulgarian population.
V. M. : How easy is it for ordinary people to build their own home solar systems and connect them to the grid?
G. S. : We are very far from that. At the EU level, there are major legislative changes called energy reform packages. Each package is a set of directives and regulations that will transform the energy and industrial sectors in Europe.
The 1st liberalisation package was adopted in the distant year 1998 and it aimed to break up the monopolies of the energy producers. At that time, all over Europe, there existed big energy companies, big state-owned companies, and everything was big energy infrastructure. The first liberalisation package actually provided for the breaking up of this state monopoly and the creation of the possibility to have independent suppliers and producers. Then in 2005-2007 there came the second phase, accepted by Bulgaria. It was the introduction of an emissions trading system. The third phase included the setting of green transition targets for the first time. Then comes the fourth phase, which is actually a clean energy package that was included during the Bulgarian presidency of the EU in 2018.
And now, with the Green Deal and the Fit for 55 targets, we are in the 5th phase. A lot of money, a lot of pressure, a change in the conceptual model. Meanwhile in Bulgaria, we have not even done the things related to the 1st liberalisation package.
V. M. : What, specifically, has been neglected?
G. S. : Bulgaria has not allowed the market into this sector. The energy monopolies have not been broken. This means that there are no energy producers, no opportunities to develop investments in the sectors and no investors who would be market participants. Instead, the state offers generous subsidies to the coal mining sectors. The state is transferring billions to a lost sector of the economy.
If we do not apply the 1st liberalisation package which is nearly 30 years old, we will be stuck. The energy supply will probably be good, but only the big energy companies will be doing big projects, with no one thinking about the social aspects, no space for new business creation, no start-ups, no decarbonisation. Everything will remain as it is now – everyone plays a role and the state gives billions in subsidies, hidden or public.
Even if the Bulgarian government tried to apply the 5th liberalisation package, especially the targets for 2030, things cannot happen, because the foundations have not been laid. Metaphorically speaking, the car cannot move because there are no tyres.
Do you remember the first government of Boyko Borisov and why it fell back in 2013?
V. M. : Yes, the winter energy protests.
G. S. : Yes. People started to get upset, because Boyko Borisov wanted to break this liberalisation package. He announced it, he planned it, the Russian proxies and the unemployed came out, and then he put this issue aside.
The Energy Union Regulation, which is the basis for the energy transformation and the goals for 2030, was adopted in Sofia on 18 June 2018, during the Bulgarian presidency. Nevertheless, Boyko Borisov came out two years later and said that he was not going to do the reforms. The regulatory reforms still have not been implemented.
This is a political root of the problem, which concerns the economic growth, poverty of many people and the continuing deficit in the state. The state does not earn the money it could have gained. In the last 2-3 years,due to the energy crisis and the war in Ukraine, there were exorbitant revenues from the high cost of emissions. Since this year this is no longer the case. It is clear that it is more convenient for us to import cheap green energy from our neighbours than to operate the power stations. And yet Borisov hid all these issues during his three mandates.
The people will get the blame, as the Bulgarian proverb goes. All of us, as consumers, will have to pay, especially the people in the southern regions, whose power stations will be closed. How much will the state pay for compensation mechanisms or artificial subsidies that the European Commission will not even approve in the end? And in the context of what is still missing – let us not forget the new financial instrument, the Social Climate Fund and the social climate plans that need to be developed and ready. Again, nothing has been done in this aspect in Bulgaria.
The social climate plans are related to the new emissions trading scheme, which includes the emissions from the transport sector, from all our drivers, and the emissions from buildings and energy shortages. There are 2,6 billion euros there and Bulgaria could have gotten a large percentage, based on GDP and population indications. What must be done is to plan how this Social Climate Fund will define energy scarcity and how it will be a financial instrument to help the decarbonisation process become socially acceptable.
What will happen if nothing is done in the end, and the most acute question arises for several million Bulgarians and several million old and energy inefficient buildings? There will be more than a scandal – there will be a revolution. This is a much greater problem than the Just Transition Fund and the closure of the inefficient coal power plants.
V. M. : If you compare how the process of just transition is progressing in Romania and Bulgaria, what can be learned from the Romanian approach?
G. S. : That if there is a political will, there are opportunities to deliver things. In Romania there is a will to use the available financial instruments to modernise and create new jobs, including in the rural areas. I may also bring here a positive example from Poland – another country which treats the just transition challenge in a serious manner. Poland has been developing geothermal technology – not a new thing, but a technology that miners understand very well. Something underground that brings heat and steam and produces electricity and heat – when you talk to the miners about this, they just feel it is in their blood, in their DNA as workers. If you tell the miners that they could become programmers, agronomists or interpreters, they will not believe. They were trained to work with machines and energy. They need to see solutions they can see as feasible, solutions they could implement with their own work. If such solutions are not offered in the course of the transition process, the whole thing will fail.
Coming back to Romania – unlike there, in Bulgaria the ecological problems are of highest gravity. We have the biggest pollutants with serine dioxide, pollutants that emit half of the Mendeleev table. Bulgaria has not been implementing the best available technologies and practices in the field of cleaning during the combustion of coal. There is no social, nor ecological thought in Bulgarian politics. And everyone will suffer from it.
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Vladimir Mitev is a Bulgarian and Romanian-speaking journalist. He is correspondent of Radio Romania for Bulgaria and is an editor at the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria.
Małgorzata Kulbaczewska-Figat is a Poland-based journalist who focuses on social changes and political life in Central and Eastern Europe. She particularly works on social movements, labour and human rights. […]
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mars 28, 2025Interview led by Vladmir Mitev on the 28th of February 2025 with Florian Marin, a Romanian trade union leader and economist.
This interview was first published in Cross-border Talks and is used with the agreement of the interviewer. Link to the original interview : Florian Marin: We cannot talk about achievements when we talk about just transition in Romania – Cross-border Talks.
V. M. : Vladimir Mitev and F. M. : Florian Marin.
V. M. : Mr Marin, first of all, officially just transition has been going on for some time. But how would you describe the degree of achievement and successes of just transition in Romania so far?
F. M. : The Just Transition Mechanism is an instrument that can be considered as a step forward, but it is not enough to solve problems as complex as Just Transition. Reorienting whole areas economically and socially is a process which, first of all, takes a long time and requires, among other things, societal will and political will.
First of all, from the point of view of the absorption of funds made available to Romania through the Just Transition mechanism, Romania’s performance is mediocre to poor. Why am I telling you this?
There is a capacity problem in ensuring the proper management of these resources. There is also a vision problem with regard to the future of the mining areas or areas which are eligible under the just transition mechanism and, in addition to this, we are seeing structural deficiencies which are more to do with the relationship with the workers.
First of all, there is no coherence or timing linking the exit from certain sectors that harm the environment and the integration of workers into other sectors considered to be more environmentally friendly. Let me be very clear and specific. It is hard to believe that a miner will get a job as a barber or a confectioner after the Just Transition Mechanism has financed some business.
Why am I telling you this? We are saying that the mechanism should create jobs when they are needed because it is useless to fire a miner and provide him with a job after 2 years when the European funds will generate some concrete results in the economic environment. No one in Romania has thought to correlate these things.
Another element that is a big barrier to the success of the just transition concerns the wage gap. Because it is hard to believe that an individual who has worked for 4000-5000 lei per month will get a job for 2000 lei per month. There is no correlation between the level of income that this individual had while working in a sector that was not friendly to an environment and in correlation with future jobs implicitly with the future income that these workers could possibly earn.
These structural deficiencies, not only are they barriers, they are serious management problems at the level of the Just Transition mechanism. At least from the worker’s perspective, I see these elements as important.
If we are talking about just transition as a European policy, and here I am referring to the Green Deal and other policies that are adjacent to the Green Deal, the trade union area also needs to understand better what this transition means, and it needs to be explained better, more coherently. After researching the collective agreements in force in companies in various economic sectors, we found that there are no chapters or clauses in these collective agreements that deal with just transition.
We are not talking about fair or unfair transition, but about transition itself. Because one of the fears that the trade union area has with regard to transition is that transition means a lot of investment. Either there’s the need for investment felt by companies to be able to operate in an environmentally friendly way risks affecting wage costs or a potential increase in revenue.
Because a company will come and say I don’t have the financial resources to increase your wages, because I need to invest in more environmentally friendly technologies, because it’s kicking us all out. And so, from that perspective, it is not very clear to me what protection mechanisms, in the end, the Romanian state is delivering to the labor force, so that the correlation between the wage level and the standard of living is real and fair in the context of just transition. We cannot find an answer to this question at the moment.
Another element that is again important for the trade union area, which is not addressed at all in Romania, at least on the public agenda, concerns the need to reduce poverty in order to support the climate agenda. Because the transition, be it green or digital, cannot succeed in the context of growing poverty.
And I’ll give you a concrete and very childish example, but it’s clear to understand. If I don’t have the money to heat my home, I’m going to cut down a tree in the forest. For the simple reason that the price of electricity is very high and then I won’t be able to afford it. Or the price of food, the price of clothes, because these also have a significant impact on the environment.
So the problem of poverty is an unresolved one in Romania, but also at European level, and this has a significant impact on the discussions on supporting the transition. At European level, we always mention that there is no green deal without a social deal. Europe has delivered a green deal, but it has not delivered a social deal. And if you look at the way this mandate of the European Commission regulates, you will see that the social pact still does not exist. Competitiveness is back on the European agenda. Of course, motivated by the geopolitical dynamics of recent times. However, in the end, all these discussions at European level also directly affect the situation in Romania.
V. M. : I understand some considerations or problems in the way the just transition is taking place in Romania, perhaps also at European level. But what role do Romanian trade unions play in this just transition? How do they relate not only in rhetoric but also in action?
Because in Bulgaria, for example, the KNSB, I suppose you know, even though there was some resistance from them as well, actually embraced just transition thinking that the money that is being given to certain segments of the just transition fund could be used for the benefit of the workers. And, for example, worker skills mapping is happening, as far as I know, because KNSB has embraced that process and, in fact, is actually managing it.
F. M. : I understand your question and thank you for it. Now, when we are talking about transition management or transition governance, because that is what you are directing the question towards – the trade unions in Romania have a role in the sense that the mechanism for just transition. Romania has a monitoring committee and the monitoring committee includes trade union representatives.
We have the National Tripartite Council, where elements relating to just transition are also addressed, and the trade unions are also part of that. But trade unions have a natural role in supporting just transition. Why am I telling you this?
If you look at the guiding principles of this mechanism, the leaving no one behind part, the unity part, the investing in environmentally friendly technologies, in skills, in competences, the balance part, but also the poverty reduction part, all of these are trade union concerns. In Romania too, trade unions are concerned in this respect. I give you the example of the National Trade Union Bloc.
The National Trade Union Bloc directly addresses this element, this transition, through training courses, through research, through technical assistance in dealing with green clauses in collective employment contracts, but also through monitoring collective employment contracts. At the same time, trade unions are part of several structures that target several operational programs at the level of cohesion policy or the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, both of them bringing the achievement of just transition, because just transition is not only the mechanism for just transition but practically all European funds target this approach through the thematic focus that the European Commission draws the Member State. From this perspective, trade unions are highly integrated, and here I am referring to the National Trade Union Bloc, the confederation where I work.
Like Bulgaria. But I come back, this is the situation all over Europe, for the simple reason that what Just Transition wants falls within the primary sphere of activity of any trade union organization. Even state aid schemes that specifically target certain companies or certain areas related to ensuring the transition are sometimes carried out with the support of trade union organizations.
In Romania, several state aid schemes have been operationalized aimed at providing the necessary funding to make certain companies more environmentally friendly. So trade unions have an active role to play, on the one hand, in relations with the government, with employers, but also at company level through collective agreements.
V. M. : At this stage, what stage has the just transition reached? I know that, for example, this small and medium enterprise segment has already been rolled out. I know that Romania is on its way to grant some money for micro-enterprises related to this aspect of just transition, but nevertheless, what is the stage of transition more concretely? What has been achieved so far in terms of realization? Or can we even speak of certain achievements?
F. M. : We cannot talk about certain achievements. From my point of view, the achievements delivered so far are insignificant in relation to the scale and the needs of society. We cannot speak of a concrete achievement when we put nothing in place.
In other words, the people in question do not have a clear perspective on the future of their jobs, the future of the city or region where they work. From my point of view, the situation is quite worrying, as we do not see some concrete achievements, and people’s confidence in this mechanism and in this transition is decreasing. And it is also decreasing, on the one hand, against the background of the increasingly prominent Eastern propaganda.
We see that the US has, for example, pulled out of the Paris agreement. Of course, in this context, in addition to the geopolitical aspect of this situation, we can see that we are still dependent on gas and we are still dependent on coal to support, in the end, economic production at European level, but also in Romania. So we are not talking about compliant achievements which would strengthen confidence in this mechanism.
V. M. : If we take a closer look at the situation in the Valea Jiului, from the point of view of the workers and the trade union aspect, but also economically, what is happening there as a process? Including the just transition, what kind of transformation is happening there?
F. M. : Frankly, other than some compensation payments that will be delivered to those workers that are deserved after all, from a certain point of view, we don’t see a clear vision. I don’t know what the Ji Valley will look like in 10 years or 15 years. Neither the County Council or County Councils, but neither the Romanian Government, apart from some strategies that sound good on paper, we have not seen a new factory built, we have not seen some new high quality jobs created.
All these things, of course, raise some question marks about the success of these funds in ensuring the economic and social transition of these regions. I think that rather, if I look at the workers in the Ji Valley, they are fighting to keep the mines open so that they keep the current economic situation and not necessarily fighting for transition. And that says a lot socially.
I mean they see their transition not as an opportunity, as it should be, but rather as a penalty that Brussels is delivering to these regions. So, from my point of view, I would answer your question more concretely, but apart from some compensatory payments and some redundancy programs, I have not seen any other notable things worth addressing in the Jiu Valley.
V. M. : Energy Minister Sebastian Burduja, immediately after Donald Trump became US president, took an anti- or skeptical line at addressing the green transition. What can we expect from this turn in Romanian state policy? That is, what concrete forms will this distancing, renegotiation or redefinition of the green transition and just transition take?
F. M. : I have followed his statements on this element. It is exactly what I was telling you earlier. It is politically difficult and he has a responsibility to do this, to explain to a population that has access to energy resources that it is paying the highest price for energy. Also, if you look at the skepticism about the climate transition, it is growing at European level.
Especially in a context where both the Draghi report and other documents, for example the Leta report, talk a lot about the competitiveness area. Since several countries have publicly expressed this dissatisfaction, Romania has chosen a part in which it wants to renegotiate certain elements of the climate transition. In fact, this is the turn which I think the Minister is taking, namely that I do not know whether we can afford at the moment to abandon the climate transition, but rather we want to have a softer approach in terms of climate targets.
And here I am referring in particular to the 2030 targets and the European Commission’s ambition to become a climate neutral economy by 2050. So I think that this is the framework in which the Minister made his statement, certainly also motivated by the fact that Europe is currently losing competitiveness and you need energy to develop. The Draghi report has also mentioned this, and there are some clear specifications in that report regarding the price that a European pays for energy and the price that an American, for example, or other people from other countries, pays.
Within this whole framework, the need to have cheap energy, or to have energy that benefits from more efficient production processes, and here I am referring specifically to gas, at least in the case of Romania, and coal, of course, after all, these are the areas that we know about, there are resources and we would like to use them to make up for the competitiveness deficit in relation to China and the United States, because, yes, the climate transition is affecting energy prices, at least in the short term, and implicitly it is also affecting a certain capacity to deliver economies of scale.
And then, from that context, the Minister’s reaction was rather, I interpret it as a political one. But the climate transition should not be abandoned, because it, as a principle and as a way of development, is right in many respects.
V. M. : You also have many contacts at European level, in Brussels, and in general in trade union circles and so on in Europe’s social and economic institutions. What kind of change can we expect in the Trump era on green transition and just transition? I mean I suspect what you’re talking about, that a kind of wave of renegotiation-seeking is influencing your policies, but how in the name is it influencing you? What concretely have you changed?
F. M. : The situation is not a clear-cut one, in the sense that the United States has no direction either, or at the very least has not provided the predictability of a strengthened relationship with Russia at the expense of Europe or with Europe at the expense of Russia, for example. And then I could not answer. However, the fact that the United States is out of the Paris Agreement, the fact that the United States benefits from important energy resources, and here I am referring in particular to liquefied gas, but not only, gives it a privileged position in the global context.
At the same time, it must be borne in mind that the United States has for decades stockpiled oil in order to have energy resources in critical situations. At the moment, at least globally, we can categorize this situation as critical, first of all, because the demand for electricity will increase greatly.
So global competitiveness depends on access to energy resources and the ability to sustain high energy consumption. At the same time, if we look at China’s energy needs to maintain its economic growth trajectory, China needs significant energy resources. So, again, this energy need of China, but also the competition, at least economically, if we look at the tariffs or the tariff barriers that are imposed, we see that the geopolitical situation is one that is not yet clear, but the war, at least at the moment, seems to be an economic one, leaving aside the situation in Ukraine.
And in this context, Minister Burduja mentioned the fact that when you need energy and you have energy at your disposal, especially in Romania, not to use it seems rather like shooting ourselves in the foot. I understood that this was also the expression he mentioned. So I think that, at least in the short term, the discussions on the energy and climate transition are not being abandoned, but they are, somehow, being put in a different place in the hierarchy, much lower down than they were in the past.
And our statement is also based on global progress at the COP. But when we look at the concrete progress delivered by these global conferences on climate transition finance, we will see that progress is still limited. So while the principle is correct, there is not enough political will and not enough global concern to make this transition a reality.
Not to be misunderstood, it is a mistake, at least strategically, for future generations who will really suffer if we fail to act. And trade union organizations, in this perspective, must support the energy transition and the climate transition, because, after all, access to resources is also becoming an important issue, and I am not only talking about energy, we can easily add water.
I can give you even more examples, because resources are dwindling. Hence the battle, if you see, they are having the clearest possible discussions about mineral resources, access to rare metals, discussions about Greenland or other areas that have not been exploited so far. The battle over resources is becoming more and more prominent.
And the climate transition, in this context, is losing ground because it has so far failed to deliver on immediate expectations. But it needs to be understood that transition is essentially not a policy or development framework that delivers immediate results. We cannot expect energy transition to deliver results in 5 years, for example. It is a process that requires, after all, a social synergy, a social contract that is oriented towards this area. We have not worked on these approaches. And the trade union area, although it could have played an important role so far, although it has been involved, cannot resolve this issue on its own. I was telling you that the National Trade Union Bloc has implemented concrete measures visibly of this transition. Unfortunately, it is just one confederation among many.
V. M. : As you mentioned, there is a fight for resources, but Romania, from several rankings, has a better degree of energy sovereignty. In other words, Romania has energy resources. Also, in the current context, Romania also has ambitions in the energy space, to be the largest producer of natural gas in Europe, to build more nuclear power blocks, to build more wind power stations and so on.
And here I would like to ask you, because there is usually a division between capital and labor, when the balances in the economy evolve, to what extent does this high degree or relatively high degree of energy sovereignty, of energy resources benefit, that is, benefit the Romanian population, citizens, workers, energy consumers and so on? And to what extent do they benefit corporations?
F. M. : Very good question! From my perspective, I think that the population benefits far too little, and the workers benefit far too little from the advantages that Romania enjoys in terms of energy resources. Look at the price we pay.
And corporations benefit significantly more. Because, unfortunately, we have seen a political class which has protected the area of capital rather than the worker. This approach is also justified by Romania’s economic model, which, unfortunately, has been the same for 30 years and needs a fundamental change.
I therefore believe that companies benefit more from Romania’s energy resources. I will give you an example: if we want to compare the way in which Norway, a poor country before it discovered oil, managed their energy resources with the way in which Romania managed their energy resources, we will see that, in Norway, we can say that the benefits of these resources were also directed towards the citizens. Unfortunately, we do not see this in Romania.
We can see that the main companies are foreign and the state, of course, collects some dividends, but it also collects money from excise duties. And if we look at Neptune Deep, we also see that there is a joint venture with other companies. And in this context it is also important to note that there is not a lack of transparency about how these resources are being used.
Let me give you a concrete example. It concerns gas deposits in Romania. In other words, if the minister assured us before the holidays that we had gas deposits to get us through the winter, there is currently an inquiry into how these stored gas resources have been used because they have been falling very quickly.
So clearly we don’t have the transparency and we don’t have a concern as a society to direct these resources in a framework where we convert them into benefits for the citizens primarily.
V. M. : You mentioned that Romania’s economic model has not changed for 30 years and now I can’t avoid asking you what will happen if a sovereignist president is elected, to what extent is there an alternative vision for Romania’s economic development and to what extent can the problems that you mentioned be addressed by a rather sovereignist kind of government or president?
F. M. : If he knows what he has to do with Romania, Romania is a rather complex country in terms of resources. I would remind you that Romania currently has the greatest biodiversity in the European Union, in the sense that we have mountains, we have the sea, we have plains, we have a fair amount of water. It is one of the richest countries in terms of water resources, energy resources and so on. Why am I telling you this? Because you can afford a development model internally, in the sense that it has a great diversity of resources that can support a reduction in imports. Romania is not in a similar situation to other countries that have only plains or only mountains.
This is not the case here. I think this creates an advantage. However, the resources, not only energy resources, the resources which Romania benefits from, are not necessarily exploited in the interests of Romanian citizens.
I think that, from this perspective, Romania has some advantages. And now, any president, after all, sovereignist or non-sovereignist, must certainly exploit these elements. The economic model in Romania has rather favored foreign capital and has been based on low wages and well-paid labor.
In the context of foreign capital taking those resources out of the country, in one form or another. I don’t know if we can afford such a model any more, given that 5 million people are working in other countries and we no longer have that well-trained and cheap labor force. Globalism essentially has some ideological problems and we see it shrinking easily.
V. M. : Yes, let’s say you’ve answered that. Because if there is an alternative model, it probably needs to be articulated and discussed in society and perhaps trade unions should have a role in preparing that model. But I also assume from your answer that this has not happened.
F. M. : Whether we are talking about a sovereignist or a non-sovereignist president, so far there has been no economic development vision delivered that coherently manages all the challenges facing Romania. This is why I believe that it is necessary, and the trade unions want or need to be part of this process of establishing a long-term development vision.
But what I can tell you is that after 1990 the market economy was largely supported by workers or by the factor of production in labor. And now we are reorienting the economic model which can be supported or should be supported by the capital factor of production, or we see that this is not happening. Because the economic model has been based more on an extractive principle. That is to take resources, extract them, take them to other countries.
But even all this sovereignist propaganda is based on the fact that the resources are not exploited in the Romanians’ interest and that the comfort of others is based on the Romanians’ poverty. Precisely because we had an economic model that rather favored this rhetoric. This is surely a mistake both of the unions and of the political fact. But in principle of the political fact.
V. M. : We are in a region which, from Poland to Bulgaria, the whole area of Central and South-Eastern Europe, has had a relatively similar experience relatively at the same time it joined NATO and the European Union. It was previously part of the Eastern bloc. Now the challenges are still similar with just transition including and green transition and the problems you are talking about with foreign capital and local capital and the dependence of our area on foreign capital.
I would like to ask you what kind of collaboration, exchange of experience, joint action there is in trade union circles in our area when it comes to subjects such as just transition or other subjects of this kind related to transformation, modernization?
F. M. : There are quite a lot of tools in this respect and they are being used. I am actually one of the experts who are recommended by the European Commission, in that platform of experts who can provide technical assistance to regions that want to access European funds for just transition. There is the European Commission which also provides technical assistance.
At the same time, the trade union movement is organized in a way that not only enables, but also achieves transfer of best practices including on just transition. We have the European confederation, we have the international confederation, under these institutions meetings, debates, technical discussions are held on the transfer of good practices.
We have regions which were dependent on the mining sector and which are now not so dependent on the mining sector. We are looking at regions in Poland, which are reorienting the economic model used in certain regions and ensuring a shift to a service-based economy so that the mining sector is no longer so prominent.
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Vladimir Mitev is a Bulgarian and Romanian-speaking journalist. He is correspondent of Radio Romania for Bulgaria and is an editor at the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria. […]
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mars 26, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 4th of March 2025. Link to the original publication, in romanian: Să venim împreună și să facem un push mare – Comunitatea Liberala.
Even if she was in the spotlight for only a few days, Anamaria Gavrilă left us with something very precious. No, I’m not referring to her 112 call asking the police for help to escape the group of journalists who wanted to find out whether she was still running for president. The POT (Partidul Oamenilor Tineri; Romanian Youth’s Party) leader gave us something far more valuable for understanding the era we live in.
The gem lies within the words she uttered in a phone conversation. She was called by Realitatea TV —recently self-proclaimed as « the people’s television »— to explain whether she was withdrawing from the race for Cotroceni. Well, in response to this simple question, Gavrilă said the following: “I know it’s delicious to talk about positions, but this is about making all Romanians, even those from the other side, understand that it’s a difficult situation for Romania. We all need to come together and make a big push to restore constitutional order and freedom in Romania. We all need to go beyond parties and any discussion.”
What caught people’s attention was her use of so-called « Romgleza, » a mix of words from two languages as different as Romanian and English. Expressions like “this is about,” “to come together,” or “to make a big push” reveal an evolution in speech that extends beyond the political sphere. A superficial Americanization of our public life, which has taken place since 1989, has changed the way our fellow citizens express themselves. While the nationalist generation of C. Vadim Tudor and George Pruteanu still upheld the ideal of a correctly spoken Romanian language, the recent nationalist wave writes without diacritics and sprinkles Americanisms among words recorded in the official Romanian dictionary (DEX). The fantasy of a connection to Dacian or Getic origins completes the picture.
But that’s not the most important takeaway from the POT leader’s intervention. What truly matters is her project to establish constitutional order without parties and without too many words. No one has expressed this totalitarian dream more clearly since King Carol II, who abolished political parties by decree and then created the National Renaissance Front, which he legitimized in 1939 through elections where all deputies and senators wore uniforms. Gavrilă is the bearer of a project that undermines democracy.
She asks us to unite “for a big push,” meaning to trample on freedom of association, the right to free speech, and political competition.
No, thank you much, we do not need așa ceva… (No, thank you very much, we don’t need that…; editor’s note).
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mars 21, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 21st of March 2025. Link to the original publication, in romanian: Înapoi la turu’ întâi – Comunitatea Liberala.
In recent weeks, we have been bombarded with the cries of sovereignists calling for « back to round two! ». At the same time, signatures were being collected for the second round, to be held on May 4, after the 2024 presidential election was canceled.
Uncertainty about the contenders was now even greater than in the fall. On the morning of March 15, the deadline for registration, only two names appeared on the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) website under the heading « candidates ». By the evening, six others had appeared, but appeals had been lodged against some of them, and press releases issued by the BEC said that in the last few hours when registration was still allowed, eight other candidates had submitted applications. On March 16, the CCR rejected 13 appeals, and the BEC did not consider any more. The next day, on Monday, 4 more candidates were given the green light by the BEC and six were rejected. New appeals were filed 72 hours after the deadline for the submission of applications. It was not until the evening of March 19 that we knew the list, because after a sovereignist candidate named Gavrilă, the POT president, had passed the BEC and CCR filters, she too decided to withdraw.
There will be 11 names on the May 4 list. I present them below, taking as a reference the division of the political spectrum into three blocks, which I described in a December article: Ce se clatină mai tare? UE sau partidele-cartel? – Comunitatea Liberala.
The governing coalition now has only one candidate, Crin Antonescu of the National Liberal Party. Indeed, unlike in November 2024, the PSD and UDMR have not entered anyone else, preferring to support the candidacy of the PNL member, who ran for the presidency in 2009, then between 2014 and 2024 withdrew from political life, preferring to stay in the shadow of his wife, Adina Vălean, MEP and Commissioner for Transport in Ursula von der Leyen’s first term. The cartel of the three governing parties has settled under the acronym ARÎ (Alliance Romania Forward).
After the withdrawal – already mentioned – of Anamaria Gavrilă, the isolationist camp has only one candidate – George Simion – backed by two of the three sovereignist parties with parliamentary representation, namely AUR, of which he is president, and POT. Diana Șoșoaca, the leader of the third sovereignist party in the chambers – SOS Romania – has been excluded from the race by the BEC and does not seem willing to support Simion. Also excluded from running was Călin Georgescu. So far, he has not pronounced either on the withdrawal of the leader of POT, the party that has claimed Georgescu’s candidacy, or on a possible transfer of votes from him to G. Simion.
The liberal bloc – in the European sense of the term, through Renew Europe – has sent Elena Lasconi, president of the Union Save Romania (USR), qualified for the November 2024 final, back into the race.
Eight other candidates are vying for citizens’ trust. For the time being at least, it’s best to situate them according to the three electoral blocs that have been formed.
Three of them – Silviu Predoiu (National Action League), Sebastian Popescu (New Romania Party) and Cristian Terheș (Romanian National Conservative Party) – are, as the names of the parties supporting them indicate, in the sovereignist pole. They were also in the November race, getting, in order, 0.12%, 0.15% and 1.03%. I would also put alongside them John-Ion Banu, who also ran for the Cotroceni in 2019, when he garnered 0.3% of the vote.
The other four contenders will seek to erode the support enjoyed not just by one electoral bloc, but at least two of the three. Thus, former prime minister Victor Ponta, until recently a member of the PSD but expelled from the party precisely for not supporting Antonescu, is insisting on the support of his former colleagues. He has defined himself, on the other hand, as a sovereignist and Trumpianist, seeking to identify with the values that Georgescu cultivated. Ponta is a kind of Romanian Fico.
Lavinia Șandru is running on behalf of Dan Voiculescu’s Social-Liberal Humanist Party, which has been a satellite of the PSD for many years. Șandru is, on the other hand, close to Cosmin Gușă, one of the main pro-Kremlin voices in the public space, so we may see her rallying the votes of Romanians who declare themselves nationalist, anti-Ukrainian and anti-vaccination, a theme that has recently resurfaced five years after the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic.
Daniel Funeriu will also cast his rod in the Penelist waters, having been education minister more than a decade ago as a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, swallowed up in 2014 into the PNL. But he is also seeking support among sovereignists, using simple explanations that equate this identity with respect for the article describing the Romanian state as sovereign. In recent years, Funeriu has clearly positioned himself in the conservative camp, which denounces wokeism and the so-called sexo-marxism, i.e. protection for sexual minorities.
Finally, the current mayor of the capital will try to get votes from the USR, but also the support of liberal voters, whether affiliated or not to the PNL, as happened in the competition for the Bucharest mayoralty.
Let’s also recall the figures: the governing cartel garnered 42-43% of the votes in last year’s presidential and legislative elections. The sovereignists ranged between 38 percent, which is what their presidential candidates collected on November 24, and 32 percent in the December 1 elections for the two chambers. The usurist camp – affiliated to the European liberal movement – garnered just over 19 percent in both polls.
Two questions are, in fact, decisive: the first is whether support for the three camps will remain within the limits described by the fall’s scores. The other concerns the dispersion within each of them.
I leave it to each of you to make your own predictions.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mars 17, 2025By Cristian Preda, University of Bucharest.
This article was first published in the review Comunitatea liberală 1848 on the 4th of March 2025. Link to the original publication, in romanian: Trei trumpiști români sau poate trei și jumătate – Comunitatea Liberala.
We don’t know if there are, in fact, any Romanian Sorosists, but it’s certain that we have, among us, a few Trumpsters. Indeed, to my knowledge, there has not been a single one of our fellow countrymen who has claimed to be a George Soros. We have, instead, several political figures who claim to be claiming to be the American president. I sketch below some portraits that are most relevant to the political situation we find ourselves in.
The oldest Romanian-speaking Trumpist is undoubtedly Mihail Neamțu. He dedicated a book of more than 300 pages to the leader in the White House, during his first term in office. It’s hard to summarize the portrait painted by the younger admirer, but basically Neamțu saw the American president as a conservative patriot of the Maniu, de Gaulle, Thatcher, Reagan series – who love « organic communities » in which the individual is not crushed by a « greedy state ».
Such leaders were opposed to Zelea Codreanu or Putin, exalted exalts who confiscate Orthodoxy and use it in « macabre terrorist actions ». Neamțu’s sympathy for his idol went very far: he forgave his « controversial morality, divorces, adventurous life » because even someone as honorable in the Orthodox synaxarium as Stephen the Great was not prevented from marrying the Turks by « intense sexuality ».
Compared to M. Neamțu, our other trumpians are even more contradictory. Călin Georgescu, for example, who was an environmentalist in his youth, joined the Trump sect as a denouncer of George Soros, even though – as a recent Recorder investigation showed – he has for years used funding provided by the American philanthropist’s foundations, as well as USAID. Georgescu is thus mimicking what Orban Viktor Orban, also a Soros grantee in the 1990s but an outspoken opponent of one of the policies supported by foundations built in the post-communist East, namely sexual tolerance.
Georgescu also defends the « traditional family ». Perhaps the plural « traditional families » should be used – for the pro-Russian leader is on his second marriage. Contrary to what Neamțu said 7-8 years ago, Georgescu has made Putin a model of a leader. He is thus trying to sell to our public a Putinized Trump or, if you prefer, a Trumpized Putin, taking advantage of the White House’s change of attitude towards the Kremlin.
The third Trumpist profile – Victor Ponta – is even more opportunistic. He debuted as a social-democratic hopeful some quarter of a century ago. He climbed the PSD hierarchy by becoming prime minister, then the party’s presidential candidate in 2014. At a time when German Christian Democrats who criticized the government in Bucharest were labeled « fascists ». At the same time, he found the Chinese communists to be a common sight. Later, leaders such as the Serb Alexandr Vučić and Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan, to whom he was an adviser, also seemed to him to be like that.
By 2020, Ponta was happy that Trump had lost the election to Biden and explained to Romanian journalists that Biden could become your friend, while the outgoing president was a capricious man who would only solve your problems if you played golf with him. Four years later, the same Ponta seems to have become a Trumpian after a game of golf with the new occupant of the White House. At least that’s what he bragged about, shortly before announcing he was running. We need to get on the history train. And that’s because PDS voters, Ponta argued, need a different offer than Antonescu.
In short: I am a Trumpian and I want social-democrat votes.
Antonescu is a Trumpian too, but only half. Hence the title of this article. Forced by circumstance to talk about US foreign policy, the government candidate for the seat at the Cotroceni said he was not a Trumpist, but that he wished the Republican had won last year. In another context, he recognized Trump as a role model, praising « the energy, determination and sincerity with which he says: the interests of my country surpass all other interests » and adding that it would be good if Romanians also elected such a man. I am not a Trump fan, but I would like to be something like him: that is pretty much his position.
Neamțu, Georgescu, Ponta and Antonescu set the tone for a concert of smaller, less expressive and generally very vulgar voices, which also come across as expressions of the Trumpism imported through « ourselves ».
From the already famous “marș, mă” (Piss off!), patented by a TV moderator – who is not only a moderator – to the attacks by a former Education Minister and the current Prime Minister on the enigmatic Sorosists, public imprecations consume untold energies. It’s a sign of misdirection. Let’s see who will run after all. For, with 11 days to go before the deadline for filing candidacies, we don’t know who will enter the race.
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Cristian Preda is a professor in political science at the University of Bucharest and a former MEP (2009-2019). His research areas are large, from political regimes, to political history, elections and party politics. […]
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mars 17, 2025By Antony Todorov, New Bulgarian University.
On March 13, 2025, the Constitutional Court (CC) of Bulgaria declared the election of 17 deputies to the National Assembly in the October 2024 elections illegal. At the same time, it obliged the Central Election Commission (CEC) to recalculate the distribution of mandates in parliament. The decision of the CC was expected for a long time; by law, the court should have ruled within two months, but it was delayed due to the need for detailed expert opinions.
The constitutional case was filed on the basis of five complaints against the announced election results, which the court merged into one, requesting an expert opinion on the results in over 2,200 polling stations (out of a total of nearly 13,000). The Court found that physical ballots were missing in two of the sections (the polling stations) , that some of the paper ballots were visibly filled in with the same handwriting, as well as discrepancies in some protocols with the number of ballots actually cast.
Pavlina Palova, President of the Bulgarian Constitutional Court. Credits : BTA, all rights reserved.
After the decision, the CEC carried out the recount and 16 new deputies took the place of the canceled deputies, and at the same time a new group of 10 deputies entered the parliament with the lists of the Velichie party. This small party was founded in 2024 with a nationalist and anti-corruption ideology, and has now announced that it will be in opposition.
The early elections of October 2024 were the second in 2024 and the seventh since 2020. After this long series of inconclusive elections for the National Assembly, participation remained relatively low (39% of voters). Eight party lists entered parliament, and the Velichie party then remained below the electoral barrier of 4%, falling short of 21 votes.
Political fragmentation once again made it difficult to form a government majority, and after many attempts (the time frame is relatively limited), a government was formed headed by Rosen Zhelyazkov from the centrе-right GERB party. The majority included also the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the There is Such a People party, a populist party founded in 2016 by an influential showman. The majority is supported by the Aliance for Rights, a party organized after the split of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party of Muslim and Turkish minority in Bulgaria. The paradox of the government majority is that these parties were among the most vocal critics of GERB’s long-term rule (since 2009), marked by corruption and the use of the prosecutor’s office as a political tool against inconvenient politicians and businessmen.
However, the October 2024 elections were described by many observers as extremely poorly organized and burdened with electoral fraud and vote-rigging. The Constitutional Court decision showed that almost 10,500 members of the Sectional Electoral Commissions (13.5% of all polling stations) were replaced at the last minute with people who had not been previously trained. In many places, fraud was detected with additions to protocols, with filling out ballots on behalf of citizens who did not show up to vote, with additions to protocols by the Sectional Electoral Commission.
On the eve of the Constitutional Court’s decision, however, the prosecution also intervened in the process. Referred to by the head of the state-owned company “Information Services”, which summarizes the votes cast in the elections, the prosecution demanded from the constitutional judges all documents submitted to them in connection with the verification of the legality of the elections. Competent lawyers immediately stated that the prosecution could not control at all the Constitutional Court. Observers saw an attempt to subordinate the Court by the lobby of Delyan Peevski, for years pointed to as an emblem of political corruption in Bulgaria. According to the expertise of the Constitutional Court, from the checked sections, the most votes rejected as illegally counted were cast for the party led by him, which emerged as a result of the split of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).
The reactions of the political parties were not long in coming. The new redistribution of seats reduces the current government majority from 126 to 121 (out of a total of 240 MPs), which greatly complicates the work of the difficultly formed government. The parties in the government reacted differently. GERB leader Boyko Borisov suspected President Rumen Radev of sabotaging the government. BSP and ITN criticized the Constitutional Court for nullifying the results of the sections for which it turned out that the paper ballots cast had disappeared, but there were filled in results in the election protocols. The far-right nationalist party Vazrazhdane as well as other nationalists from the smaller parties in parliament demanded the cancellation of the elections in their entirety and new elections. The right-wing liberal coalition PP-DB, as well as President Radev, sided with the Constitutional Court and were critical of the prosecutor’s office.
From now on, things are in the hands of legislators – whether they will find a good solution to the accumulated problems with the elections, such as the return of machine voting everywhere and taking into account the machine result, as was introduced in 2022, stricter rules for the appointment and training of Sectional Electoral Commission members, and real countermeasures by the prosecutor’s office against election fraud.
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Antony Todorov is a political scientist and a professor at the New Bulgarian University. He was visiting teacher at ULB (Brussels) and at the University of Bucharest and president of the Bulgarian Political Science Association from 2001 to 2012. His research interests lie in democracy, party politics, and the study of elections. […]
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mars 14, 2025By Alexandra Iancu, University of Bucharest.
Romanian elections elicited tremendous interest. While the jury is still out on the legal and procedural aspects of the constitutional doctrine of militant democracy (banning candidates on the grounds of illiberal statements and actions, the annulment of the presidential elections), the events unfolding during the past months are, first and foremost, an epic failure of politics. The political appeal surrounding the unexpected electoral surge of Mr. Calin Georgescu, the radical right candidate who seems to challenge half of a century of findings in social sciences, continues to spur numerous hypotheses of how it was possible, through what channels, and with what outcome. The recent ruling of the Romanian Constitutional Court on banning Georgescu from running in the presidential race is final. Mr. Georgescu’s statement in the evening of his candidacy’s invalidation – “my mission has been completed,” the seeds of ‘awakening to consciousness’ had been planted” bears however some bitter truth.
The sole focus on Călin Georgescu is to discard the elephant in the room, namely the leading causes of the recent democratic decline in Romanian politics. One might argue that understanding the origins of the recent political cataclysm could be instrumental in knowing what to do next.
The current crisis results from a long period of micromanaging political stability. For the last four years, the governmental coalition of the Romanian social democrats and liberals secured an ideological, eclectic, yet relatively stable cabinet with a comfortable parliamentary majority. The high levels of fragmentation of the parliamentary opposition, which included both progressive and radical right parties, unable to cooperate in putting pressure on the government, rarely strong-armed the executive. In an overall context of economic hardship (high budgetary deficit and public debt), the electoral erosion of governmental parties was bound to happen.
In this vein, the 2024 electoral year was, first and foremost, an attempt to micro-manage the effects of political uncertainty by controlling the election calendar or testing viable competition formulas. The decision to couple the EP and local elections in June 2024, presented as a measure to ensure domestic stability in a sensitive geopolitical context, bore some fruits. Social democrats and liberals fell below the symbolic – and highly desired – threshold of 50% of the vote (48,5%). Yet, the overlapping local/European electoral calendar acted as a political buffer against the emergence of a sovereigntist/integrationist cleavage (see Iancu chapter on Romania forth.). Radical positions gathered altogether about one-fifth of the vote. It was only a momentary victory. In the fall, a symmetrical attempt to play with the timings of the presidential rounds of elections and the parliamentary electoral calendar backlashed. The governing parties lost support (barely reaching 35% of votes), whereas the self-defined sovereigntist camp broke the glass ceiling of 30%. While the first round of presidential elections influenced parliamentary elections’ results, they also marked the official beginning of a genuine and visible new type of polarization. The political competition in the pro-European camp and the inability to present a common candidate in the electoral race had an ample effect on the competition structure in the first round of the presidential elections. Fourteen candidates competed against each other. Plain calculus on election’s results shows that a center-right alliance or a joint candidate of the governmental coalitions would have easily beaten Georgescu’s score.
Legal conundrum and lack of accountability
Starting with the ruling in October to ban Diana Șoșoacă, a radical right candidate, from the presidential competition on the grounds of the court’s newfound mission to defend constitutional values, to the annulment of the first round of presidential elections and the banning of a second right-wing candidate Călin Georgescu, the Court became the centre of a national and international debate about the legitimacy of its interventions in the electoral processes. For some opinion leaders, the Court raised to the challenge of defending democracy; for others, it self-bootstrapped its jurisdiction. However, a note should be made. The CCR’s activism is far from exceptional, resulting from a long process of individualizing the Court as the most significant problem-solver in Romanian crises, of which there are many and recurrent. This was primarily the effect of a political choice. All major parties/actors took key moments to legitimize their options not politically/democratically but through the Court. While it is true that the Romanian CC rulings spurred an impressive wave of political emotions and polarization, it failed – as usual – in nudging public institutions to assess and become accountable for their action/inaction. For instance, the decision to annul the first round of presidential elections came after intelligence service briefs were declassified, suggesting that Călin Georgescu, a far-right, pro-Russia politician who came in first in the first round of elections (22,94%), benefitted from a mass interference operation carried out from abroad. While Georgescu has been indicted on an extensive list of offenses, no significant sanctions on the institutional failures preceding the campaign or related to the intelligence briefs came to light until the present day. The recent change of the president of the Permanent Electoral Authority seems oddly unfair, as a potential systemic failure of state institutions seems without other notable outcomes. This could only boost conspiracy theories and victimization strategies by the far-right.
The Georgescu model.
Calin Georgescu’s rampant ascent did not come out of the blue. An intensive social media campaign using TikTok contributed to bolstering his public notoriety and challenging preexistent values towards his candidacy. Alleged foreign intervention (which needs substantiation) and a colorful entourage (mercenaries, shady businessmen, etc.) suggest he was not the lonely underdog fighting the system with zero funding. However, while he branded himself as a messianic leader, it is not less worthy of mention that Georgescu masterfully manipulated preexistent political, social, and economic systemic failures.
In the first round of elections, Georgescu voters had been primarily young people (almost a third of the citizens aged 18-24 years old) with medium levels of education, residing mainly in small and medium-sized towns. His electoral backing also received an impressive vote of confidence from the Romanian diaspora. The low electoral score of Georgescu in Bucharest (13%) also suggests a potential regional/economic divide activated in the recent elections (as the Bucharest-Ilfov region is also highly developed from a social and financial standpoint as compared to other areas of the country. However, the economy is only partially to blame for the contemporary hurdles of Romanian politics. Recent forms of polarization have more in common with the symbolism of inequality (and different forms of social marginality) than proper socioeconomic grievances, as the country’s Gini Index has continuously declined.
Two days before the conclusion of the registration process of future candidates for the next presidential elections, the attention continues to turn toward various names and their fitness to govern or to political alliances and projections in terms of the electoral outcomes. From an institutional standpoint, the recent constitutional adjudication was unlikely to yield a different result. However, it is still accurate to say that Georgescu’s ban on running could end up solidifying his legacy. The seeds have been planted. The glorification of the far-right interwar Romanian leaders, the challenge of the Ukrainian-Romanian border status quo, hardline Euroscepticism, and the antimigrant discourse came to the fore for the first time. In the absence of a political program meant to respond to some of the causes of his political success, it is more than likely that his ideas will amplify and increase the identity gap over time. In the short run, it is also expected to create further resentment and surprises at the polls.
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Alexandra Iancu is a professor at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Bucharest. She teaches courses on comparative politics, political parties and ideology, democratization and democratic backsliding. […]
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mars 12, 2025By Sergiu Mișcoiu, Babeș-Bolyai University, interviwed on 12/03/2025.
Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu says that he was relieved to receive the CCR’s decision. Călin Georgescu cannot run in the presidential elections in May. The Sovereignist Pole is looking for a candidate for Cotroceni. Three names are currently being circulated. Among them, the one who has been sending pro-Kremlin messages for almost two decades stands out. Russia will adapt depending on the decision that will be made at the AUR level and the discussions with Mr. Georgescu. Russia will not support a candidate who scores very low, political scientist Sergiu Mișcoiu tells RFI.
Sergiu Mișcoiu: I received the CCR decision with relief, but it was to be expected. I looked with joy at the decision made by the BEC. It is an encouraging signal that other institutions, besides the Constitutional Court, have mobilized to fulfill their role, their mission. Beyond the status of the chamber, registration, candidacies, here we will have to discuss a reform of the AEP, the BEC system and, of course, the entire institutional system, so that mechanisms from these that allow for better supervision of the elections and the entire process leading to the election of the President of Romania, but also of the Parliament and local elected officials, can be put into operation from the moment the previous election is practically over. After all, we had a major vacuum in Romania in relation to this supervision of the entire process leading to the election, not the election itself. And it seems that now the institutions have woken up and we have a form of democratic vitality that we are rediscovering and that we should take to the end through a more concerted action to clean up public institutions and orient them towards modernization.
Reporter: Călin Georgescu’s first reaction, after the announcement of the CCR decision, was that he considered his mission accomplished. « I have exposed the demon in all his ugliness ». What did he actually mean?
Sergiu Mișcoiu: It is the part of the messianic, millenarian, savior discourse that he has accustomed us to. Mr. Georgescu positioned himself from the start as an anti-system candidate, showed all the strengths of the system from his point of view and demonstrated to his voters – at least this is his desire to present things to us – that the entire political, institutional, judicial system opposes him, because he has a totally different message from the others for the country and represents the true solution. It is exactly the type of populist discourse, with messianic overtones, that we find in other parts of the world. But in Romania, at least since Corneliu Vadim Tudor, we have not had such a type of discourse, and here we are encountering it after almost 25 years.
Reporter: Later, he returned with a message in three languages in which he said that while America is becoming great again, Europe and Romania, under dictatorship, have become small and corrupt and he assured that things will not stay that way. What do you think is next?
Sergiu Mișcoiu: I think that between the two messages, his attention was drawn to the farewell message. Basically, the first was a message that demobilized the electorate. Now, at the moment, the demobilization of the electorate is not very welcome. Insofar as a presidential election is coming up and today we will have a decision that will be made regarding the candidate supported by the Sovereignist Pole, especially by AUR, but also with the blessing of Mr. Georgescu, and I think that the second aggressive message had two types of objectives. The first is to place himself in the wake of MAGA, in the wake of the Trump administration, trying to get closer to the Washington speech once again to benefit from support from that side and, secondly, to mobilize the troops, to show that Georgescu’s spirit is still present, even if he will no longer be a candidate. And once again we have a messianic image, as if detached from the two bodies of the sovereign, one that is physical and that can no longer move forward. But the spirit of Mr. Georgescu will continue to breathe in all of us, through, of course, the movements that his successor will continue to make as a candidate. I think these were the objectives and, of course, it should be noted that through short and very clear messages, Mr. Georgescu has the ability to give food for thought to his opponents and, perhaps, to set things in motion among his supporters.
Reporter: Russia has spoken through the voices of several officials in recent days about the elections in Romania, in support of Călin Georgescu. Now, Călin Georgescu is out of the game. Are we to believe that Russia is waiting for another name to be pulled from the hat or does it already have someone in mind?
Sergiu Mișcoiu: Russia will adapt depending on the decision that will be made at the AUR level and in the discussions with Mr. Georgescu today. I am convinced that Russia will act opportunistically, it will not support a candidate who scores very low. We saw how it still managed to push a candidate forward, in November 2024, and then it will focus its efforts on supporting, perhaps not so obvious, perhaps a little more discreet, but perhaps precisely for that reason quite effectively, a candidate who has a chance, the candidate of the Sovereign Pole. On the other hand, it must be emphasized how ridiculous it is that a state like Russia – which mimics the organization of elections, practically organized only one more liberal election after 1991, when the USSR collapsed, and otherwise the elections were organized in a completely undemocratic manner – now has to give lessons regarding the elimination of presidential candidates in European Union states, which, whatever they may be, are in a democratic, functional state, which has nothing to do with the one in Russia.
Reporter: George Simion goes to Călin Georgescu with three presidential options. He himself, although he has repeatedly said that he does not want to enter the race for Cotroceni, Dan Dungaciu and Dan Puric. The Adevărul newspaper reported today that the controversial political consultant Anton Pisaroglu has also announced his candidacy for the Presidency of Romania, saying that his main objective is the resumption of free elections under international supervision. Well, Anton Pisaroglu helped Călin Georgescu…
Sergiu Mișcoiu: If Pisaroglu enters this race, we will have a different turn of the campaign. Then Mr. Georgescu will probably manage to convince Mr. Simion that there is no official AUR candidate and to support Mr. Pisaroglu. But this move would be one that, from the perspective of Mr. Pisaroglu’s low notoriety, from the perspective of his affiliation, would harm the score of the sovereignist pole. I think that the two options currently being considered are rather George Simion, who was actually preparing this move for a long time, but Mr. Georgescu’s attitude remains unknown, because Mr. Georgescu seems not to have been so convinced of plan B, which should have gone in parallel with plan A. With Mr. Simion, subsequently taking the flag from Mr. Georgescu’s hand and moving forward in these elections, he would not be so thrilled because he would lose control over the electoral flow and over the decision to run per se. And the second option, which I think is worth considering, is Dan Puric, who has been consistent for almost two decades, at least 15 years, in this position of critic of liberal democracy, having as a defect, let’s say, the still too great proximity he has to the Kremlin’s discourse, which he has not hesitated to praise on several occasions, which not even Mr. Georgescu has done in the same transparent manner. I think that the two options have benefits and drawbacks. As we have seen, Mr. Simion is not able to bring all the votes that Mr. Georgescu can bring, but he is still in a fairly favorable position, having already significant electoral capital. Mr. Puric has this ability to rise rapidly, because he already has significant public notoriety and a discourse that is more compatible with that of Mr. Georgescu than with that of Mr. Simion. So he would be a better fit as Mr. Georgescu’s legal successor. But the unknown will be how mobilized those in gold will be and how mobilized this electorate would be less eager to support a project that can be much more clearly identified with Moscow’s stamp on it.
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Sergiu Mișcoiu is a professor and researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, specialist of nation-building processes, political transitions and transformations in CEE and francophone Africa. He is also Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and of the Centre for African Studies.
This interview was conducted by the RFI’s Romanian section and the content was translated and provided by the interwee himself.
Link to the original interview in Romanian : Polul Suvernist caută candidat pentru Cotroceni. Rusia se va adapta, nu va susține un candidat care să facă un scor mic (Analist) […]
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mars 12, 2025By Sergiu Mișcoiu, Babeș-Bolyai University, interviwed on 11/03/2025.
Călin Georgescu has been a controversial figure in Romanian politics from the beginning. His messages and actions in the public space have provoked heated reactions in society in such a way that he went, between November 2024 and March 2025, from the status of favorite in the presidential elections to that of rejected candidate. This transition was due to a combination of political, legal and institutional factors, which culminated in his exclusion, at least temporarily, from the race for Cotroceni.
From candidacy to exclusion
In the canceled presidential elections, Călin Georgescu surprised the political scene after he managed to attract a significant number of supporters who sent him to the second round, alongside Elena Lasconi, the leader of the USR. His speech, based on sovereignty, anti-system rhetoric and vehement criticism of the political establishment, resonated strongly with a part of the electorate dissatisfied with the direction and decisions of the authorities. Although the elections were canceled and his candidacy was invalidated, Călin Georgescu’s supporters continued to proclaim him « the elected president ». The fact that he might not reach Cotroceni seems, in their eyes, just further evidence of the conspiracy against him. According to university professor Sergiu Mișcoiu, Georgescu’s success in a certain social segment was due to both natural factors – the attraction that his speech exerted on a part of the electorate – and artificial factors, including external interventions.
The invalidation of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy in the presidential elections was an anticipated moment, given the controversial circumstances that marked his rise and, later, his political decline. According to political scientist Sergiu Mișcoiu, state institutions acted coherently, given that Diana Șoșoacă’s candidacy had previously been rejected on similar grounds.
« The fact that Mr. Georgescu came first in November 2024 was certainly due to some factors, as we know, natural, in the sense that a part of Romanians was seduced by his speech, but also to some artificial factors, external interventions, and this transition from the candidate who comes first to the candidate who fails to enter the presidential race was somehow anticipated from the moment when the cancellation of the presidential election was decided on December 6. It was clear that the entire institutional system, if it wanted to be coherent with itself, could not admit Mr. Georgescu’s candidacy given that it had previously rejected Ms. Șoșoacă’s candidacy and annulled the elections due to anti-constitutional activities committed by Mr. Georgescu and which are now the subject of criminal investigations, » analyzed Sergiu Mișcoiu for Ziare.com.
In this political landscape marked by polarization and increasingly heightened tensions, the invalidation of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy in the presidential elections by the BEC generated strong reactions among his supporters. Prof. univ. dr. Sergiu Mișcoiu analyzed this phenomenon from a deeper perspective of Romanian society: the extreme fragmentation of public opinion and the lack of a consolidated civic culture. « Of course, in public opinion and especially among its supporters, the spirit has not been lost on the contrary, it has intensified, and here is a big problem of Romanian civic culture, of the way in which we have educated our citizens, we enable them to participate in collective decisions, to be part of the same society. » « Basically, we have pieces of society in the divided Romania that are confronting each other, it is a problem of longer and much deeper reflection, but, apart from this phenomenon that we cannot immediately treat with strictly institutional means, it was clear that there could be no question of Mr. Georgescu being able to run, just as Mrs. Șoșoacă could not run and probably neither could other citizens who would embrace a discourse like that of Mr. Georgescu and Mrs. Șoșoacă for the reasons invoked in a manner, I believe, ultimately, with all the awkwardness of expression and communication,it was a legitimate decision of the Constitutional Court, » Sergiu Mișcoiu told Ziare.com.
Just a few days before the deadline for filing candidacies for the 2025 presidential elections (March 15), the Romanian political scene is in a whirlwind of tense events. The rejection of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy has forced the sovereignist pole to urgently recalibrate its strategy, and all indications show that George Simion is ready to enter the race. Names such as Dan Dungaciu, who denied the story surrounding his candidacy, or Cristela Georgescu, excluded by important voices in AUR, have also been circulated. There are feverish calculations in the sovereignist party, which is trying to anticipate the impact of the new electoral dynamics if Călin Georgescu’s invalidation remains definitive at the CCR. Analysts say that the rejection of Georgescu’s candidacy was anticipated, and the strategy of the sovereignist pole seems to have already been outlined months ago. Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu, from the Faculty of European Studies of Babeș-Bolyai University, explained to Ziare.com that a « plan B » was already prepared, and this could involve the candidacy of AUR leader George Simion.Plan B: George Simion, the reserve candidate. The rejection of Călin Georgescu’s candidacy at the BEC was not an insurmountable blow for the sovereignist camp, but only an obstacle that could be overcome through a well-developed strategy. Professor Sergiu Mișcoiu believes that this change in strategy is not accidental, but part of a plan thought out since the winter. The analyst points out that, although George Simion and Călin Georgescu had different visions in the past, they have come closer again due to a common interest.
« I think there has already been a plan B since January, if not since December. This plan B is for Mr. Simion to run instead of Mr. Georgescu, I think he already has the signatures collected and is only waiting for the Constitutional Court to decide today to reject Mr. Georgescu’s challenge so that Mr. Simion can assume this task. It will be a surprise if it is not Mr. Simion and if it is someone else from this pole, of course there are other options, but the one with somewhat higher electoral chances is Mr. Simion. Going by the following consideration: in the past they did not have the same vision, but the two visions have come closer, the most radical of Mr. Georgescu and the somewhat more moderate one in the past of Mr. Simion. They have merged into a sovereignist pole that considers that Mr. Georgescu has been done a great injustice », Sergiu Mișcoiu told Ziare.com.
Călin Georgescu’s role in the electoral strategy
Even if he does not run for president, Călin Georgescu would not disappear from the political foreground. According to analyst Sergiu Mișcoiu, he will most likely be proposed for the position of prime minister. In the long term, he could be « pushed » to play a significant role in nationalist politics in Romania. « Călin Georgescu will be proposed for the position of prime minister, he will probably be pushed forward later, but at the current stage, all nationalist energies will have to gather around a candidate from the AUR ranks and, most likely, as I was saying, Mr. Simion, who would end up winning the first round, which they would like, which is not at all excluded, and who would pose big problems in the second round for his opponents, » Sergiu Mișcoiu also opined for Ziare.com.
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Sergiu Mișcoiu is a professor and researcher at Babeș-Bolyai University in Romania, specialist of nation-building processes, political transitions and transformations in CEE and francophone Africa. He is also Director of the Centre for International Cooperation and of the Centre for African Studies.
This interview was conducted by Ziare.com, and the content was translated and provided by the interwee himself.
Link to the original interview in Romanian : Cum a ajuns Călin Georgescu de la „președintele ales” la candidatul respins […]
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mars 10, 2025By Petia Gueorguieva, New Bulgarian Univeristy
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) held its 51st Congress on 15-16 of February 2025. The Congress is the party’s highest permanent body, elected for a four-year term. It is composed of local organizations’ delegates, party leadership and deputies. To 51st Congress, 917 delegates have been nominated, and 872 registered on 15 February 2025, including 43% women and 57% men.
The 51st Congress takes place in challenging times for the party, as its mere survival is at stake following the long-lasting and steady decline since 2009. Over the years, BSP has changed its leadership, programme and statutes, but failed to modernize, renovate and to offer a progressive left alternative to Bulgarian voters and to enlarge its support.
On the contrary, under the leadership of Kornelia Ninova (2016-2024), the BSP suffered splits, internal “wars” between factions and has been transformed into personalized leader party. Critics have been either silenced or expelled from the party. For instance, in February 2023 during the 50th Congress, 14 socialists including one MEP and members of the National council were excluded. In 2017 new party statues were adopted, providing for a direct selection of party president by all party members, abolishing the traditional practice according to which the Congress elects the party chair. New statutes introduced a limitation of mandates for elected party officials and deputies.
Bulgaria has been in protracted political crisis and has organized seven national elections from April 2021 to October 2024. The crisis along with the appearance of new challenger parties have precipitated the decline of BSP, which from main opposition and second parliamentary force has been reduced to fifth parliamentary place. Successive electoral defeats failed to trigger any substantial party change. After the “catastrophic” electoral results, the party leader Ninova announced twice her resignation in 2019, and then in 2021, but she managed to stay at the top position. In September 2020, she ran the first intraparty direct leader election, which she won by an overwhelming majority of party members votes, leaving competitors far behind.
June 2024’s early elections led to another electoral debacle for BSP. The coalition “BSP for Bulgaria” received only 151 560 votes (6,85%) and won 19 seats in the 240 members parliament. Moreover, the party obtained only two MEPs in 2024 European elections, losing three out of the five seats it had in the European Parliament elected in 2019. Consequently, the intraparty opposition and especially the Youth organization pushed Ninova to resign. She has been expelled from the party. The National council has designated the deputy chairman Atanas Zafirov as an interim president of BSP and Borislav Gutsanov at the leadership of the party parliamentary group in the 49th parliament elected in June 2024.
The “post-Ninova” BSP hasn’t achieved an electoral surge at the seventh parliamentary elections held on 27 of October 2024. The coalition “BSP – United Left” received 184 403 votes (7,32%) and 20 MPs. However, the new party leadership has broken with the main party’s strategy of never forming a coalition with Citizens for European development of Bulgaria (GERB). Thus, BSP joined the three-party governmental coalition formed by GERB with the populist party “There is Such a People!”. The new government led by PM Rosen Jeliazkov (GERB) is approved by parliament on January 16th, 2025. The BSP has four ministries – Labour and Social Affairs; Environment and Waters; Youth and Sports, and Regional Development and Public Works. The party interim president Atanas Zafirov is nominated Deputy Prime minister.
51st Congress of the Bulagrian Socialist Party. Credits : Petia Gueorguieva, all rights reserved.
The main tasks of the 51st Congress are the election of the new party chair and new national party’s bodies. But the most important task is to put an end of internal “wars” and to consolidate the organization. The National council proposed to Congress several amendments of party statutes. Consequently, the abrogation of the direct leader selection by all party members has been supported by vast majority of delegates. On the contrary, Congress has rejected the proposal to abolish the limitation of number of mandates for elected positions. Moreover, the delegates have approved the proposal to change the designation “President of the Party” to “President of the National Council” of BSP to underline the collegial party.
The abolition of the direct election of party leader by all members allowed the Congress to proceed with the selection of new president. Initially 17 candidates received nominations and registered to run for the position but a great number of them gradually withdrew their candidacy. Eventually, seven candidates ran the first round on February 16th. The biggest number of delegates’ votes received the interim party president and deputy PM Atanas Zafirov and the minister of Labour and Social Affairs Borislav Gutsanov. Zafirov won the second round with 422 votes against Gutsanov who received 365 votes. The Congress has elected the new National Council and Control Commission. A new executive bureau is taking place too.
The 51st Congress of BSP has discussed a document “New guidelines for the development of BSP”. According to it, the party must clearly define its direction to democratic socialism of the 21st century and to find the pathway toward its revival as a major national political force.
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Petia Gueorgieva is a senior professor in the Department of Political Science of the New Bulgarian University. Her researches focus on Central and Eastern Europe politics and parties, the process of europeanization and democratization. […]
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