Will Romania be the next country to go down an illiberal path?

On November 24th, Romanians headed to the polls for the first of the two-round presidential elections. The next morning, the frontrunner for the upcoming run-off was Călin Georgescu, a virtually unheard-of independent candidate mostly excluded from the election polls and the large TV debates. 

He is a declared admirer of Romania’s WWII fascist leaders, has called the EU a “failed project” that Romania needs to get out of, and claims that Russian “wisdom” is “Romania’s chance”. He is ultra-conservative and has declared that women are not capable of holding positions of power like the presidency. He is a vaccine sceptic and even against birth through C-section. 

At first glance, the polls have overlooked his success through a 3.8-million-likes viral TikTok campaign. There, he talks about God, Romanian poets from the 1800s, and how the country is now enslaved by the West, coupled with dramatic background music and Putin-like power poses while horse riding.  

What drove this result?  

The fact that many Romanians had to Google “Who is Georgescu” the morning after the first round makes the situation seem unpredictable and confusing. While the success of this particular candidate may have been unexpected, the long-term uprise of the alt-right was arguably not. 

Romanian society has long been showcasing the characteristics that seem to encourage the success of right-wing populists. The two mainstream political parties, the self-described left-wing Social-Democrat Party (PSD) and the right-wing National Liberal Party (PNL), both socially conservative but moderately pro-European, are widely perceived as corrupt and self-serving. Their individual levels of support have been consistently declining, so, to stay in power, they used Romania’s proportional representation system to form a governing coalition. This lack of political alternatives accelerated the erosion of trust in the political class. During these presidential elections, neither of the candidates backed by the two mainstream parties participated in the televised debates with the other candidates. Neither of them made it into the run-off. 

Combined with some of the highest economic inequality and poverty rates in the EU, this political disillusionment stands in stark contrast to the collective hope for a prosperous, democratic, and Western-oriented country 35 years after the Anti-Communist Revolution. For many, the post-1989 democratic project has failed, a clear predictor of demand for extremist movements. 

Why him? 

Before the election, the main alt-right threat came from the Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), a party formed in 2020 which has since become the second highest-polling party in Romania, and Diana Șoșoacă, whose party SOS separated from AUR in 2021. To contain the threat, Romania’s Constitutional Court denied Ms Șoșoacă’s candidacy on the grounds that her extremist declarations endanger the country’s constitutional foundations. The AUR candidate was allowed to run but toned down his views to avoid the same fate, leaving the door wide open for Georgescu to capitalise on the demand for extremism. Some conclude that such institutional interference in the electoral process is not the solution, since the vote transfer from AUR and Șoșoacă to Georgescu seems to have been incredibly efficient. Others merely lament that Georgescu wasn’t denied his candidacy as well. 

Then there is, of course, TikTok, the candidate’s route to fame. Given his declared campaign funding of zero and the army of accounts with bot-like behaviour promoting his content, it’s easy to see why his overnight success is considered shady. This comes after an international wave of accusations of TikTok promoting the content of candidates favourable to Chinese interests in foreign elections. The European Parliament summoned TikTok’s CEO over Georgescu’s alleged advantage on the platform, which the company denies. Another potential culprit is Russia, which, at a critical time in the Ukraine war, has every interest in having a pro-Russian leader in one of NATO’s easternmost members, a regional facilitator of aid to Ukraine and home to one of the largest NATO air bases. 

Why it matters 

It’s safe to say that Romanian elections are rarely, if ever, the centre of international attention - but with Romania’s importance for the NATO-backed war in the neighbourhood and the future of the EU threatened by yet another illiberal pivot, eyes should be on this strategically placed country. Despite its halfway decent performance in last week’s parliamentary elections, long-term trends suggest that the political establishment is on the way out. On Sunday, the choice between the pro-Russia, alt-right Georgescu and the pro-Western, centre-right, socially progressive Elena Lasconi will determine where Romania goes from here.