George Simion’s defeat last Sunday in Romania’s presidential election run-off is yet another cautionary tale for eurosceptics and anti-establishment insurgents in a hurry. Only two weeks previously, Simion had won the first round with 40 per cent of the vote, double than what the second-placed candidate and his run-off rival, Nicusor Dan, achieved. Yet it is the latter who is now about to be sworn-in as the next president of the East European country, after pulling off a spectacular comeback between the two rounds to not only eliminate the 20-point gap between him and Simion but to win by 53 to 46 per cent.
There is no need to look for evidence of fraud in explaining this colossal turnaround. It is true that the entire European and Romanian establishments, with their propaganda machineries, mobilised with all their combined might to prevent a nationalist victory. Every possible smear, and every trick in the campaigning and voting book was pulled.
After his shock first-round advantage, Simion and his nationalist conservative party, AUR, suddenly found themselves fighting a Brexit-era-style “Project Fear” on steroids, complete with dire warnings for the Romanian economy – credit downgrades, currency devaluation, etc – international investors and financial institutions. Overt anti-Simion campaigning by EU figures, including unacceptable interference from the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, completed the picture.
Tellingly, on the night of his victory, Mr Dan chose to wave the EU flag to his supporters, rather than the Romanian one. He was technically correct to do so, for this was the EU’s victory over yet another nationalist “rebellion” in its midst, over yet another so-called “far right” candidate seeking to claw back some of his country’s sovereignty from the grasp of Brussels. After it botched the first attempt to hold back the Romanian populists at last year’s cancelled elections, the Union and its in-country political underlings had to strain every muscle to dodge the second Romanian nationalist bullet at the last possible moment. But they did, and now it’s done.
The story doesn’t end here, though – not by a long shot. This outcome is both bad but also good news for Romania’s nationalist conservative movement, which AUR now unquestionably dominates. The negative aspect is obvious: (almost) every defeat is a setback, and carries various risks in its trail. The party leader might face an internal challenge to his authority; the members might become demoralised and disengaged; members of the parliamentary party might be enticed to jump ship to the winners’ camp (a rather common practice in many European countries’ legislatures). Indeed, AUR’s smaller sister-party, POT, which rode the Calin Georgescu wave into parliament at last year’s elections, has already imploded this week.
But there is also a silver lining to this debacle – perhaps even a blessing in disguise for AUR and the Romanian conservatives. The country hovers on the edge of economic catastrophe, having been kept on economic life support for months, through borrowing, by its incompetent Socialist-led Left-Right coalition. Romania has the highest budget deficit in the EU, at some 9 per cent, with 4.5 per cent inflation and an 8 per cent current account deficit (also the highest in the EU).
The idea was to prop things up until the regime had “safely” passed the elections last year, and secured itself another round in power. But because they had to cancel the elections in December when the wrong guy (Georgescu) looked like winning them, the whole country was kept in limbo for much longer than the corrupt ruling class would normally do, thus leading to the sorry present state of affairs.
Had he won, Simion would have been handed this poisoned chalice and been made responsible for all the brutal economic decisions that are about to come. The Left-Right government – his enemies – would have resigned and washed their hands of the whole mess, inviting AUR to take charge of an explosive situation. Simion may be a talented, forceful politician and campaigner, but he is young and inexperienced; AUR is only 5 years old, has never been near government, and would certainly not be ready for it right now even in “fair weather”.
Coming to power at this point would likely have been politically fatal, both for Simion and AUR. Their enemies, controlling the vast majority of the media, would’ve hounded them for every little mistake, let alone the bigger ones. The Romanian nationalist conservative movement would have been utterly discredited, perhaps for a decade if not more.
This may sound like a “sour grapes” argument, but the facts are clear: at the start of this entire political cycle last year – when Romania was due to hold both parliamentary and presidential elections – there was no serious expectation of either Simion or AUR coming anywhere near to controlling the presidency or the government. It was not supposed to happen, and it was understood that the next cycle, in 2028-29, was when the nationalists would really be ready for a proper victory.
Indeed, Simion came 4th on 13 per cent in the original presidentials last year (when Georgescu took 1st place). That he eventually came to enter the presidential final on 40 per cent in the re-run this year, was an accident of fate more than anything else. It was not yet his time. Even though he would have certainly tried to make the best of it, the odds are that he would have succumbed, politically, to the intrigues and rearguard actions of the Romanian deep state, aided by the EU regime – much like Donald Trump did in his first term in the White House, when he never got to actually control the US Government, and was impeached twice.
All things considered, therefore, the present scenario is not just not-bad for Simion and AUR – but it actually presents a positive opportunity. AUR is now the undisputed exponent of Romania’s national conservative movement, and constitutes the clear and only serious opposition to the old establishment parties – and to the newer ones like Dan’s backers, the Renew-affiliated progressive USR. With discipline, good policy work, better member and candidates vetting, and more careful messaging, AUR can now quickly shoot up to the top in voters’ preferences, like Reform in the UK.
One virtue of this highly contentious election has been that it presented two stark, diametrically-opposed choices – the nationalist, conservative, pro-working class Romania-First Simion v. the liberal-progressive, rainbow-ally, globalist EU-worshipping Dan – and divided Romanian opinion with utmost clarity. The battle-lines are now drawn in a very useful way for the next stage of the political struggle: the old, corrupt establishment, in hock to big (and often foreign) business, sustained by EU interference and funding, on the one hand; and on the other hand, the anti-establishment conservative movement centred around the ideas of family, nation, faith and liberty.
As Trump and MAGA found out in the 2024 campaign, political polarisation is the prerequisite for defeating an Ancien Regime whose traditional method of perpetuating its rule has always been to muddy the political-ideological waters and divide the resistance against it. So this is a positive development in a Romanian context.
And finally, the most powerful by-product of Simion’s Romanian presidential campaign, regardless of its eventual failure: the massive 46 per cent of the popular vote (on a 65 per cent turnout) that he obtained for the national conservative cause – despite the globalist Juggernaut unleashed against him and AUR by their Romanian and EU adversaries.
In the dejection and surprise of defeat, the full significance of this huge score for a young nationalist party leader on his first tilt at the presidency, with no other major political allies behind him, has been somewhat lost. But those 46 percentage points are a powerful boost to Romanian conservatism, and a solid, legitimate foundation on which to build the next chapter of AUR’s fight for freedom, democracy and justice in Romania. Victory is inevitable, sooner or later.
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