The most shocking political events took place on February 26 in Bucharest, where the front-runner in Romania’s presidential elections, Calin Georgescu, was seized by the police on the street in broad daylight and brought in for “questioning”. In true autocratic government style, this happened just before he was going to formally submit his candidacy to enter the electoral contest. A large number of police raids have also been ordered against members of Mr Georgescu’s campaign team and other political associates.
Background
Ostensibly, all this is related to an inquiry by the Prosecutor General into Mr Georgescu’s first presidential campaign in December last year. He shot up from relative obscurity to win the first round, held on 24 November, by a clear margin. That result was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, and Mr Georgescu was on track to win the 8 December run-off by a landslide.
As an independent, anti-establishment, nationalist figure, Georgescu’s sudden ascent rocked Romanian politics. His first round victory, helped by a strong showing on TikTok, was immediately ascribed to “Russian interference”. As Brussels Signal explained at the time, however, it was his campaign message rather than TikTok views which blindsided the dreary, conventional campaigns of the vastly-discredited political class and propelled Georgescu to the top. Indeed, Georgescu’s social media metrics were in fact inferior to his rivals’.
Yet the result was deemed to be “unacceptable” by a Romanian establishment faced with the prospect of losing the presidency to an outsider who had expressed scepticism towards the EU and a preference for peace in Ukraine. A “dodgy dossier” of bogus intelligence (analysed in detail by Brussels Signal) was quickly produced by the State’s intelligence agencies, claiming – without any evidence – that Georgescu’s first round win was the work of a “state actor” (i.e. Russia).
The Biden Administration, then in its final days, gave the nod to this wholly un-evidenced theory; the EU also quietly agreed with the Romanian government’s line (later Thierry Breton said the quiet part loud). With this international political backing secured, the country’s Constitutional Court went ahead and cancelled the entire presidential electoral process while second-round voting was already underway.
No concrete evidence of election-swaying Russian interference has ever been produced to this day. The narrative has since shifted to the supposed “unsuitability” of Mr Georgescu to serve as president because his views do not align with those of the establishment, whether on the EU, Ukraine, and a number of other topics. A re-run of the presidential elections was set for May this year. In the meantime, the central question in Romanian politics, since the cancellation of the December elections, has been whether Mr Georgescu would be “allowed” to run again.
If this is shocking to the democratic sensibilities of Western readers, it shouldn’t be: the same Romanian Constitutional Court had already banned another “far right” Romanian politician (and member of the European Parliament) from standing in the original presidential elections last year, on account on her perceived “beliefs” which the Court deemed to be insufficiently “democratic”. Even Politico called it a “Putin-style” ruling.
It’s not about “the law”
Even just what had happened in Romania until the events of February 26, in particular the cancellation of the December elections, was more than enough to prove that democracy had been annihilated in that benighted country. Cancelling free elections just because the “wrong” guy was about to win, and failing to provide any proof in support of the allegations leading to this extreme measure, is an unprecedented act in the history of the Western community of democratic nations that Romania was once so eager to join. It is something that may happen in banana republics in obscure Third World countries – but not in an EU and NATO member. So why do it?
The principal explanation is that a Georgescu presidency would be a terminal event for the highly corrupt Romanian political class. The Romanian political system, as is widely known in the country, is based on blackmail and largely run with the “assistance” of the intelligence services – successors to the brutal communist Securitate – which are in possession of various sensitive “files”. The secret services are deeply involved in politics and the justice system, and act as arbiters of the political game. As a reflection of the spooks’ critical role in “managing” the country, it’s worth noting that SRI’s budget (Romania’s domestic intelligence service) is the third largest in NATO (€1.1 billion) after the FBI and MI5, and larger than those of the corresponding French, German and Italian agencies combined.
And here’s the rub. Under the constitution and through the National Security Council which he chairs, the president has full access, oversight and de facto control over Romania’s intelligence services. Preventing Mr Georgescu from becoming president is therefore an existential issue for the entire political class – much in the same way in which Donald Trump’s accession to power in the US is now leading to a deep cleansing of the deep state.
In fact, the timing of these events may not be entirely dissociated from the rapid progress being made in the US in unravelling the full extent to which organisations like USAID and other parts of the American government have been involved in shaping politics in other countries (perhaps Romania too) with the connivance of local political forces.
The extraordinary decision to suspend the rule of law and to cancel democracy, as was done via the Constitutional Court in December last year, can only be explained through the existence of truly high stakes at play. It is hard to read these events as being about “saving democracy”, “upholding the law” or “countering Russian influence”, as the self-serving narrative of the Romanian regime tries to claim. Rather, it appears to be, quite simply, a purely political struggle in which the dominant political class is fighting for survival against a powerful “populist” force and is using the “law” as pretext to contain and destroy it – regardless of the truth.
A fatal geopolitical mistake
Had there been serious evidence either against Mr Georgescu personally, or to prove “Russian interference”, it would have been presented by now. Irrespective of what “case” the Romanian prosecutors bring against Mr Georgescu – and the initial charges are rather weak and indirect – there is virtually no way to disguise this as anything other than what it is: a politically motivated intimidation and detention of a presidential candidate for the purpose of excluding him from the race. (A race, by the way, which Georgescu is projected to win by a long margin.)
Most importantly from the point of view of Romania’s own national interests is the geopolitical signal sent by the Romanian government. Detaining Mr Georgescu – which might soon be followed by a formal arrest – is an unprecedented act of defiance against the United States, which until recently was considered to be Romania’s principal strategic partner and security guarantor.
The US Vice President himself, JD Vance, used his recent Munich speech to criticise the cancellation of Romania’s December elections and to effectively reject the Romanian government narrative of “Russian influence”. Elon Musk has also repeatedly called out the anti-democratic annulment of the Romanian people’s vote. And yet, the Romanian government has now decided to press the “nuclear button” and double down on its decision to neutralise Mr Georgescu.
This brazen defiance of a clear political signal from the United States marks nothing less than a major geopolitical decision on Romania’s part to choose Europe over the US. It comes in the context of the accelerated breakdown in Euro-Atlantic relations over the question of peace in Ukraine and the US-Russia negotiations from which the Europeans are, so far, being excluded.
In Romania, like in many other European countries, there is currently great anxiety over the security arrangements for Eastern Europe if – as it seems likely – the US reduces its role in NATO and in the region. But it’s not remotely clear what that actually means.
Meanwhile, the Romanian establishment, which is traditionally pro-EU and pro-NATO, is largely sharing in the wider European panic at the policies of the Trump administration, and indeed in the hostility towards the new White House. Indeed, many are joining their European counterparts in seeing Trump’s America as a sort of “enemy”.
This has created the political room, in Romania, for thinking the unthinkable: that maybe there isn’t that much left to lose anyway by angering the US – since the Americans are on their way out, or so the opinion goes. So it appears that a risk can now be taken on the US relationship in order to pursue the vital reward of neutralising Mr Georgescu and keeping Romania in the same “safe hands” of the country’s old political class.
The American reaction to today’s events is unlikely to be positive. It has already been reported, in some quarters, that the question of withdrawing NATO troops and equipment from East European NATO states – which Russia included in its 2021 pre-war demands – is likely to be part of the current US-Russia negotiations. In Romania’s case, such would involve mostly US military forces and equipment, including the Aegis Ashore anti-ballistic missile defence system at Deveselu and the MK airbase together with the US troops there. This would be a disaster for Romania’s security and would effectively leave the country exposed to direct Russian political-military pressure in the future.
And yet, right when these very issues are being negotiated by the US with Russia, right at the most sensitive, make-or-break moment for Romanian national security since the Cold War, when the only focus of the Romanian state should be to lobby Washington and ensure full US support and consideration for Romania’s defence going forward – what does the country’s political leadership decide to do? It decides to provoke the US, to offend America’s sense of democracy as absolutely clearly stated by the Vice President, and to showcase to the entire world Romania’s anti-democratic turn.
All this will only make it easier for the United States to trade off Romania’s interests in a Realpolitik negotiation with Russia, if it comes to it. The real winner from this debacle can only be Vladimir Putin, who already banked the initial cancellation of the December elections as evidence of the West’s “hypocrisy” (as Russia says) about its adherence to democratic values. Now, by directly antagonising the US over Mr Georgescu’s detention, Romania has only reinforced its error, and made it that much easier for the US to cut it loose. How foolish.
Zero evidence: the bogus ‘intelligence’ behind Romania’s cancelled election