Pro-EU centrist wins Romania's tense presidential race over hard-right nationalist

Korea Herald

19-05-2025

BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) — Pro-European Union candidate Nicusor Dan on Sunday won Romania's closely watched presidential runoff against a hard-right nationalist who modeled his campaign after US President Donald Trump. The victory marked a major turnaround in a tense election that many viewed as a geopolitical choice for the former Eastern Bloc country between East or West.
The race pitted front-runner George Simion, the 38-year-old leader of the hard-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, or AUR, against Dan, the incumbent mayor of Bucharest. It was held months after the cancellation of the previous election plunged Romania into its worst political crisis in decades.
With more than 99 percent of polling stations reporting, Dan was ahead with 53.9 percent, while Simion trailed at 46.1 percent, according to official data. In the first-round vote on May 4, Simion won almost twice as many votes as Dan, and many local surveys predicted he would secure the presidency.
But in a swing that appeared to be a repudiation of Simion's skeptical approach to the EU, which Romania joined in 2007, Dan picked up almost 900,000 more votes to solidly defeat his opponent in the final round.
On Sunday evening, thousands gathered outside Dan's headquarters near Bucharest City Hall to await the final results, chanting "Nicusor!" Each time his lead widened as more results came in, the crowd, many waving the flags of Europe, would erupt in cheers.
Once it was clear he had secured a victory, Dan gave an emotional speech from an outdoor stage where he thanked his supporters, and reached out to Simion's backers with a message of national unity.
"What you have done as a society in these past weeks has been extraordinary," he said. "Our full respect for those who had a different choice today, and for those who made a different choice in the first round. We have a Romania to build together, regardless of political choices."
Final electoral data showed a 64 percent voter turnout — a sharp increase from the first round on May 4 where 53 percent of eligible voters cast a ballot. About 1.64 million Romanians abroad participated in the vote, some 660,000 more than in the first round.
The high turnout was believed to have benefited Dan who, shortly after 11 p.m. local time, emerged onto the balcony of his headquarters and waved to his thousands of supporters who had gathered along the length of a boulevard in central Bucharest, eliciting an ecstatic roar from the crowd.
At the raucous rally, Ruxandra Gheorghiu, 23, told The Associated Press that she had been considering leaving Romania, but that with Dan's victory, "I feel like everything is going to be fine."
"I was so scared that our European course is near the end.... We are still in Europe and we are not fighting for this right," she said. "I cannot explain the feeling right now."
Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician who rose to prominence as a civic activist fighting against illegal real estate projects, founded the reformist Save Romania Union party in 2016 but later left, and ran independently on a pro-EU ticket reaffirming Western ties, support for Ukraine and fiscal reform.
After the election Sunday, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent her "warmest congratulations" to Dan and noted that Romanians "turned out massively" to vote.
"They have chosen the promise of an open, prosperous Romania in a strong Europe," she said in a post on X. "Together let's deliver on that promise."
Romania's political landscape was upended last year when a top court voided the previous election in which far-right outsider Calin Georgescu topped first-round polls, following allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow denied.
Simion capitalized on the furor over the annulment of that election and, after coming fourth in last year's canceled race, allied with Georgescu, who was banned in March from running in the election redo.
Simion then surged to front-runner in the May 4 first round after becoming the standard-bearer for the hard right, and promised to appoint Georgescu prime minister if he secured the presidency.
Years of endemic corruption and growing anger toward Romania's political establishment have fueled a surge in support for anti-establishment and hard-right figures, reflecting a broader pattern across Europe. Both Simion and Dan have made their political careers railing against Romania's old political class.
Cristian Andrei, a Bucharest-based political consultant, told the AP that the election results showed that Romanians "rejected hate and reactionary politics and embraced the pro-western direction" for their country, which has played a major logistical role in delivering Western assistance to neighboring Ukraine in its fight against Russia's full-scale invasion.
"It is a win for the optimistic Romania, but there is a large part of voters that are really upset with the direction of the country," he said. "Romania comes out of this election very divided, with a totally new political landscape, where older political parties are challenged to adapt to a new reality."
In the lead-up to Sunday's vote, Simion's rhetoric had raised some concerns that he wouldn't respect the outcome if he lost. In the early afternoon, he told reporters that his team was confident in a "landslide victory," if the election was "free and fair."
In the afternoon on election day, he repeated allegations of voting irregularities among Romanian citizens in neighboring Moldova and said that his party members would conduct a parallel vote count after polls closed.
However, Simion gave a statement on social media in the early hours on Monday acknowledging that "we lost the second round of the elections."
"We cannot accuse significant tampering with the ballots," he said. "We'll continue to represent the sovereignist, patriotic, conservative movement in Romania, and we'll continue to fight... for freedom, for God, for family and for our common ideas."
The president is elected for a five-year term and has significant decision-making powers in matters of national security and foreign policy. As winner of Sunday's race, Dan will be charged with nominating a new prime minister after Marcel Ciolacu stepped down following the failure of his coalition's candidate to advance to the runoff.