Romania elections: Is the hard-right trying to ‘Make Eastern Europe Great Again’?
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Forget Make America Great Again, does the far-right’s first round election win in Romania suggest a “Make Eastern Europe Great Again” movement is on the rise?
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Read time: 3 minutes
In brief…
- Călin Georgescu, a far-right pro-Russia candidate in the Romanian elections, secured a shock victory in the first round.
- He campaigned on a largely anti-EU campaign using TikTok, hitting out at aid for Ukraine and immigration in Romania.
- The News Agents say far-right nationalist movements are on the rise across Eastern Europe, and there are fears this could spread West too.
What’s the story?
Far-right ultranationalist candidate Călin Georgescu has won in the first round of the Romanian elections.
His win has come as a major shock given he is not affiliated to a political party and was until recently relatively unknown.
Pre-election polls suggested he would only receive around 5% of the vote. But by Monday morning, he had received nearly 30% of the vote after 99.9% of ballots were counted.
A second round of voting is taking place on December 8, where Georgescu will face a run-off against second- placed centre-right candidate Elena Lasconi.
It comes as nationalist, Moscow-friendly and anti-EU views gain prominence across Eastern Europe.
With more European elections to come, specifically in Germany, there are concerns the far-right could perform strongly in Western Europe too.
So how big a blow is this for both the EU and Ukraine?
Will Romania's far-right presidential candidate 'make Eastern Europe great again'?
Who is Călin Georgescu?
Georgescu left the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), the ultranationalist party now headed up by George Simion, after it hit out at his pro-Russia and anti-NATO stance.
He ran as an independent candidate instead, campaigning using TikTok on a largely anti-EU, anti-establishment platform.
Georgescu is strongly against providing Ukraine with funding, claiming the “imperialist” military industrial complex is fueling its war with Russia.
He has previously described Russian president Vladimir Putin as a “man who loves his country”.
Georgescu is also “pro-tariffs and anti-immigrant”, Emily Maitlis notes.
Much of his strategy was straight out of the Donald Trump playbook in this respect, a populist figure willing to stand up to the so-called liberal elite.
Why is his first-round win significant?
Romania currently accepts a vast number of Ukrainian refugees and its government “has been firmly on the side of supporting the rights [and] the democratic freedoms of Ukraine”, Emily notes.
But with a potential Georgescu presidency, “what happens to those refugees?” she asks.
Romania shares a 400-mile border with Ukraine. Western allies see Romania as playing a vital role in assisting Kyiv's war efforts, having donated military aid and high-tech weapons.
It also hosts a NATO military base which Georgescu himself has criticsed, and is used as a key transit route for Ukraine’s grain exports.
What’s The News Agents’ take?
Suddenly, there is a “make Eastern Europe great again” energy on the rise in the region, says Emily.
She wonders whether Donald Trump has influenced this growing trend.
Jon Sopel agrees: “Forget the MAGA movement. We’ve now got the ‘MEEGA’ movement - make Eastern Europe great again.”
Other countries where ultra-nationalism and Moscow-friendly NATO-scepticism is growing include Hungary and Slovakia, they note.
Jon adds: “There is a group of countries now that are sort of forming a bloc within the European Union that really don't like an awful lot of what the European Union stands for. It is a major challenge.”
Looking ahead, all eyes are on Germany, which will hold a snap election next year.
Emily says: “What you're looking at is the election that happens in Germany in February and whether what is starting to emerge is a sense that the [views of the] hard right are not so out of line with the majority.”
Jon argues: “Politics has changed so much and we have seen that people are prepared to jump.
“And that if they are prepared to jump and they suddenly think our country is better served by having this immigrant-sceptic, NATO-sceptic, Russia-friendly person as leader… then we’ve seen vast shifts of public opinion in a very short space of time.”
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