16-05-2025
‘I'm no barbarian at the gates' … the Romanian populist on path to power
At the top of the escalator next to the European Parliament's forum bar, George Simion is met by an Italian eurosceptic who is one of Giorgia Meloni's protégés. There are selfies and pleasantries exchanged in Italian.
Then the Romanian is mobbed by a group of young Spanish women, members of the hard-right Vox party who rush to pose with the emerging star of European populism.
There's no break for Simion as he's then greeted by Matthieu Valet, 39, one of Marine Le Pen's rising stars in her National Rally. The two men embrace. 'We both have the same problem,' Simion tells the French MEP who is a member of Le Pen's Patriots for Europe group in Brussels, which includes the Hungarian leader, Viktor Orban.
