The pro-EU candidate and mayor of Bucharest, Nicușor Dan, has won the presidential elections in Romania, ostensibly ending a political crisis that began with the annulment of the elections in December 2024. Dan secured over 53 percent of the vote.
With a relatively high turnout of 64.75 percent—an increase of over 10 percent compared to the first round—the result reflects a broad rejection of the Trump-inspired rhetoric espoused by his far-right opponent, George Simion of the fascist AUR (Alliance for the Union of Romanians) party.
Simion had pledged to fire 500,000 public sector employees, following the model of Trump and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.” He was backed by international far-right figures like Steve Bannon and promoted various fascist conspiracy theories, including a version of the “Great Replacement” directed against migrant workers in Romania. Simion also received the backing of Benjamin Netanyahu, via a message relayed by his physician, Herman Berkovits. Simion had previously boasted that he would defy international court rulings to invite the Israeli war criminal to Bucharest.
Dan’s campaign capitalized on the widespread rejection of Simion’s fascistic “national revival” and channeled that sentiment into the dead end of Romanian and European bourgeois politics. With support from all mainstream parties and media outlets—including factions of the Social Democrats and the pseudo-left—it avoided any serious discussion of the urgent issues facing the working class. Even the real threat posed by the AUR and Simion was downplayed, with criticism largely focusing on his alleged “pro-Russian” leanings. In recent months, Romanian journalists have exposed a network of fascist paramilitary groups and training centers, yet these were largely silenced during the campaign, along with their ties to parts of the Romanian state and the influential Orthodox Church.
In reality, AUR is set to benefit politically in the coming period, as it will become the sole parliamentary opposition to Dan’s new government. Romania’s semi-presidential system theoretically grants limited powers to the president, primarily over foreign affairs and the military. In practice, however, these powers—combined with authority over judicial and intelligence appointments—make the presidency the central force in Romanian political life, shaping parliamentary majorities and executive leadership.
Dan has already announced plans to appoint Ilie Bolojan, former interim president and a leader of the National Liberal Party, to head a “government of national unity” composed of all “pro-Western” parties. As both Bolojan and Dan have expressed, this government’s main goal will be to implement sweeping austerity measures to close the budget deficit and fund a massive increase in military spending.
In his first speech on Sunday night, Dan stated that his top priority would be to assess “where we are on security and the ReArm program” (a reference to an EU-backed rearmament initiative). He also warned of a “difficult period” ahead that would be “necessary to economically balance this economy.”
Dan reiterated the expansionist ambitions of the Romanian ruling class toward neighboring Moldova. Thanking Moldovans with Romanian citizenship who had voted for him, he declared: “I assure them that Romania will always be there for them, to help them on their European road and to one day be together.” One only needs to imagine the uproar in European capitals had Russia’s Vladimir Putin made a comparable statement about a neighboring country.
The campaign itself was shaped by mounting geopolitical tensions from the war against Russia and growing frictions among the imperialist powers. The strengthening of a Polish-Romanian alliance against Russia enjoys bipartisan support from the ruling classes in both countries. In Poland, the first round of the presidential election also took place on Sunday. Warsaw mayor Rafał Trzaskowski, backed by Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform, won just over 30 percent of the vote, ahead of hard-right PiS candidate Karol Nawrocki. Simion had endorsed Nawrocki and appeared with him in Poland last week. In turn, Tusk recorded a video message in Romanian before the election, urging voters to support Dan.
In neighboring Hungary, the Romanian elections became a flashpoint between two rival factions of the ruling class. During the runoff campaign, Viktor Orbán expressed support for Simion, praising his fascist rhetoric about a “Christian Europe.” This gave Péter Magyar—Orbán’s millionaire nationalist challenger who long benefited from his regime—an opportunity to attack Orbán from the right. Magyar accused him of “betraying our Hungarian brothers in Transylvania” and staged a PR march from Budapest to Oradea in Romania. Leaders of the UDMR (Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania), who have dominated Hungarian-majority regions since the 1990s, also criticized Orbán.
Magyar was exploiting the widespread fear among ethnic Hungarians in Romania of Simion, a professional provocateur who has incited violence against the Hungarian minority in the past. Though this group has long been courted by Orbán and the UDMR, their regions consistently rank among the poorest in the country, despite nationalistic posturing and endless promises of investment.
An important ally of Dan during the election was the regime of Maia Sandu in Moldova. In her congratulatory message, Sandu praised Dan as “a powerful voice for liberty and democracy.” But Sandu—a Romanian national and former World Bank adviser—has consolidated her power through the banning of opposition parties and imprisonment of political rivals. The mobilization of Moldovan voters was key to Dan’s qualification for the runoff.
One of Dan’s most significant international backers was French President Emmanuel Macron, who publicly endorsed him before the election and was among the first leaders to speak with him on Sunday night.
Throughout the campaign, Dan was the most consistent advocate of unconditional support for Ukraine. He explicitly tied Romania’s “national security” to Russia’s defeat, while maintaining deliberate ambiguity about sending Romanian troops to Ukraine—despite widespread public opposition to the war. In fact, Simion’s perceived resistance to further aid for Ukraine was a major reason for his strong showing.
Romania’s ruling class has, for now, succeeded in suppressing anti-war sentiment and opposition to austerity by exploiting widespread disgust toward the Trump-style figure of Simion. They could do so only because of the complete political disenfranchisement of the working class and the bankruptcy of the post-Stalinist Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the trade unions. Calls by pro-imperialist “lefts” such as MP Victoria Stoiciu to “reset” the PSD or to build new political initiatives around the unions must be firmly rejected by workers as political traps.
Despite the triumphant tone of the European and Romanian press, the new government under Dan will face growing opposition from the working class sooner rather than later. The decisive question is whether this opposition can develop a conscious socialist and internationalist perspective. This requires the building of a Romanian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).