On May 4, Romanian citizens will go to the polls to elect their president, after the Constitutional Court annulled the elections held in November 2024 on the grounds of malign foreign interference. Given that constitutional prerogatives place Romania's president at the center of the foreign and defense policy ecosystem, the candidates' visions may provide insights into how Bucharest's role in the European security architecture will evolve in the coming years.
Even though he was definitively eliminated from the presidential race by the Constitutional Court, the shadow of Calin Georgescu, the far-right candidate who won the first round of the 2024 presidential elections, still looms large in the current electoral landscape. From the moment the election was annulled until now, the SVR, Russia's foreign intelligence service, has come out with a press release in support of Georgescu, and Romanian state investigations have revealed that this candidate was allegedly backed by organized crime groups and mercenaries with plans to stage a coup in Romania. However, this new evidence does not prevent the majority of Romanian citizens from preferring Georgescu's political heir, George Simion, as president.
All the opinion polls have so far qualified Simion as the leading candidate, and if elected president, he pledged to name Georgescu as prime minister. He is an admirer of the domestic policies promoted by Giorgia Meloniand Donald Trump, at the inauguration of which he attended as part of the European conservatives’ delegation. George Simion was banned from entering Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova because of his unionist and revisionist political campaigns. Although he is skeptical towards the EU, he is a supporter of NATO and has previously declared that Russia is the biggest security threat of Romania. He pledged that, if elected, he will stop the potential U.S. troop withdrawal. In March, the former Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki supported Simion’s bid for presidency in a press conference in Bucharest, which drew criticism from Donald Tusk.
If the sovereignist pole, well consolidated around Simion, has the first chance to win the Romanian presidency, the same organization and ideological clarity cannot be seen among the pro-European candidates. There have been numerous splits within the centrist bloc, including the premiere of a party withdrawing its support for its own candidate mid-campaign, making the answer to the question of who Simion will enter the final round with one of the biggest dilemmas of this electoral season. At the moment, there are three candidates with a solid chance to reach the second round alongside Simion: the common candidate of the governmental alliance, Crin Antonescu, the mayor of Bucharest, Nicu?or Dan, and the former prime minister and social-democrat leader, Victor Ponta. Although popular among the Social Democrats (the largest party in Romania), the now turned right-leaning Ponta has been on a slight downward trend in recent weeks, following a controversy on his Serbian citizenship. He stated in a podcast that he received his second citizenship from President Vucic as a reward for agreeing to open the Iron Gates of the Danube during the massive floods of 2014. Several Romanian villages were flooded as a result of Ponta’s decision as prime minister, but the city of Belgrade was saved.
As in the case of Ponta, who is running under the slogan "Romania First" and is often displayed on TikTok wearing a red MAGA-style cap, but also in the discourse of other candidates, Donald Trump's political influence on the Romanian campaign is clearly visible. George Simion is making constant efforts to emulate himself into a Trump of Romania, recently claiming on Steve Bannon's podcast that he too is being threatened with assassination as an enemy of the establishment. Although not branding himself a Trumpist, Crin Antonescu said the current U.S. president wants to go down in history as a peacemaker, which Romania must help and salute, including by shouldering Trump’s political efforts for a Ukraine peace formula. The mayor of Bucharest affirmed that he is not alarmed by the changes in the White House direction because "Trump is doing exactly what he promised" by changing the geopolitical focus of the U.S. from Europe to China.
Presidential candidates have responded to the need to increase defense spending, though none have come close in pledges to Trump's 5% requirement. Simion called for a “strong and national defence industry”, while Antonescu and Dan have both advanced the idea of a gradual increase to 3.5% of GDP for defense. Although they all agree on the importance of military modernization, the candidates reject the idea of introducing compulsory military service for improving Romania’s military might, with Simion being the only one that previously promoted the idea of a 3-month compulsory military service for all Romanian youth.
Another dossier in which we see the alignment with Donald Trump's ideological direction is the Euroscepticism embraced by some candidates. Simion has distinguished himself with his anti-EU speech, calling the European Union the "new Soviet Union" in 2024. Antonescu claimed that Ursula von Der Leyen should have not taken another term as chief of the European Commission and called firmly for the EU to abandon the Green Deal. Similarly, former Victor Ponta criticized the lack of competitiveness of the European Union in a constantly changing world ("Europe no longer has leaders") and that a real reform of the EU bloc is needed.
Although the conversation on further EU military integration is taking place in Brussels, in Bucharest, the presidential candidates are shying away from making proposals on the construction of a European Defense Union, perceiving the EU's role as rather economic and prioritizing the strategic partnership with the U.S. to meet defense needs. The only presidential candidate that has introduced in the electoral conversation the idea of Romania working closer with the European partners for a common security framework in the case of an American disengagement from NATO is Nicu?or Dan. Bucharest’s mayor was also one of the few candidates that pledged to ask support from NATO allies if Russia will invade the Republic of Moldova.
It is clear from their statements and programs that the Romanian presidential candidates are seeking a more active and visible role for Romania in the European Union and NATO, although it is unclear with what resources and instruments they will use to achieve this recognition as a regional leader. Predictably, all the candidates rejected the idea of Romania sending troops to Ukraine, preferring more of a logistical hub and reconstruction role in the post-war architecture conversation. Unlike in the elections in 2024, the political direction of Donald Trump is deeply felt in this round: all candidates are trying, regardless of ideology, to get into the good graces of the American president, even imitating some of his policies and discursive marks. Ultimately, all the candidates are largely shying away from answering an important dilemma with growing potential to materialize: what would they do if the projected plans to withdraw U.S. troops from Eastern Europewill impact Romania’s security? From this perspective, the election campaign in Romania still seems to be being conducted under the banner of guaranteed Euro-Atlantic security, a concept that is, day by day, more and more in danger of becoming obsolete.