State head: Presidential election in Romania: right -wing populist by far

In the EU and NATO country Romania there is a threat of a shift to the right. When repeating the presidential election annuled last year, the extremely right -wing candidate George Simion won the first round at a large distance, but missed an absolute majority. Whether he will become head of state therefore decides in a runoff election on May 18. Simion competes against the second place in the first round – this is probably the liberal conservative, non -party mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan.

According to the central electoral office, Simion received around 40 percent of the votes cast. After counting the ballot papers, a number of more than 99 percent of the electorate of the non -party candidate Nicusor Dan, with 20.91 percent – closely followed by Crin Antonescu, candidate of the bourgeois -social democratic government with 20.30 percent. Antonescu admitted his defeat. At this status, the two separated around 56,000 votes.

The central message of Simion in the election campaign was his shoulder with a Kremlin -friendly politician. “We wrote history together, we are approaching an excellent result,” said Simion in a speech spread on TV. In Romania, which borders Ukraine the Ukraine, who is the War of attack, borders the head of state of foreign and security policy.

Presidential election of 2024 was canceled because of Kremlin friend

In the first round of the presidential election in November 2024, the right -wing extremist Kremlin friend Calin Georgescu surprisingly received the most votes. However, the constitutional court declared the result invalid due to irregularities in campaign financing. The court also banned a new presidential candidacy Georgescus and thus approved a decision by the central electoral office. This had complained that Georgescu did not recognize basic democratic values. The public prosecutor’s office has been investigating him since the end of February.

Georgescu now appeared as Simion’s ally. Simion, on the other hand, did not rule out Georgescu in the office of prime minister. On election day, the two even demonstratively went together for voting. Among other things, Georgescu had stated that the future of Romania was in the “wisdom of Russia”. In addition, Georgescu had publicly doubted that the Russian attack war against Ukraine was real.

On the other hand, Simion’s party Aur is part of the EKR Russian parliamentary group in the EU Parliament, which also includes the party of Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Some observers also attribute the fact that Simion has now been looking for the end of the shoulder with the Kremlin friend Georgescu still popular in the surveys.