Romanian authorities are struggling under intense pressure from US President Donald Trump’s administration to ensure that a far-right candidate’s campaign can proceed unhindered into an election in May.
US officials in private meetings with Romanian counterparts in recent days have focused almost exclusively on the vote, warning them not to block the campaign of Mr Calin Georgescu, a Trump champion who has denounced Nato and praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to people familiar with the discussions who declined to be identified.
The Trump team’s insistence on Romania’s political crisis was laid bare by Vice-President J.D. Vance, who used a keynote address in Munich last week to blast Romania’s decision in December to scrap a presidential vote after security officials determined that Russian interference had helped propel Mr Georgescu to a stunning first-round victory on Nov 24.
Officials in Bucharest were caught off guard by Mr Vance’s broadside at the Munich Security Conference on Feb 14, in which he condemned European leaders for marginalising right-wing groups, and have been bewildered by the US insistence regarding Mr Georgescu, one of the officials said.
The fallout over Mr Georgescu’s come-from-behind victory and the court decision to cancel the election has become a rallying point for Europe’s far-right. As Romanian authorities prepare for a repeat election in May, the vice-president brandished the ruling as an example of established powers suppressing the political rise of populist groups.
Exchanges have taken place between Romanian Foreign Minister Emil Hurezeanu and Trump envoys Keith Kellogg and Richard Grenell at the Munich conference.
Economy Minister Bogdan Ivan met with Mr Vance at an artificial intelligence summit in Paris earlier in February.
Beyond those and other points of contact, the government in Bucharest has struggled to open a sustained channel of communication with the Trump administration with which it could allay concerns over the ballot, the person said.
The White House referred a query seeking comment to the US State Department, which declined to comment on the record.
Broadside against Europe
Mr Georgescu, a 62-year-old former agricultural engineer, had been polling in the single digits until a social media campaign that featured high-quality TikTok videos helped him pull out a shock first-round victory in November.
But the result was scrapped after the court decision, which cited findings that the digital campaign was aided by outside help.
Mr Georgescu remains the frontrunner for the do-over ballot in May – and has been buoyed by his strident criticism of the cancellation as a “coup d’etat” abetted by Brussels. As speculation swirls over whether he may be barred from running, polls show that a significant number of Romanians view the court’s ruling negatively.
Mr Vance, whose Munich speech barely mentioned European security or the war in Ukraine, said the court ruling was based on “flimsy” intelligence – and laid into the stability of Romania’s democratic institutions.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few thousand dollars in advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” the US vice-president said on Feb 14.
Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who said Romania was committed to holding “free and fair elections,” urged Romania’s interim president to call a meeting of the country’s highest security body to discuss the speech and the country’s ballot.
The Black Sea nation, which shares the longest border with Ukraine of any European Union member state and has been a staunch supporter of Western efforts to support Kyiv, is struggling to adapt to the Trump turn.
Voter frustration
As with EU peers, government officials in Bucharest fear that the aggressive manoeuvring from Washington and direct interference in the election process could bring about a breakdown in relations with a crucial ally, one of the officials said.
Romania hosts thousands of troops at a Nato base positioned to protect Europe’s easter flank.
A day after Mr Vance spoke, Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned his overture to Germany’s far right as a direct intervention just over a week before Germans go to the polls on Feb 23. After his speech in Munich, the vice-president met the co-leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, Ms Alice Weidel, in the Bavarian capital.
“We will not accept outsiders intervening in our democracy, in our elections, in the democratic formation of opinions in favour of this party,” Mr Scholz said at the same conference. “That’s not done – certainly not among friends and allies.”
Billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk has also buoyed the candidate. He featured a post on his X platform on Feb 18 quoting Mr Georgescu as vowing to ban organisations tied to philanthropist George Soros if he becomes president.
“Romania deserves its own sovereignty”, Mr Musk, who has sparked outrage for his open support of groups including Germany’s AfD, said.
Mr Georgescu’s campaign and his proxies are the subject of a range of investigations after the candidate said that he’d received no funding for his presidential campaign.
Any decision on the validity of his candidacy would be made by the electoral bureau and a court assessing whether he meets criteria to run.
But the judicial system, which is replete with appointees from the established political parties, is viewed by many Romanians as politicised and corrupt.
Mr Georgescu has harnessed voter frustration over corruption and poverty – and shared many of the conspiracy theories embraced by the far right. In a podcast interview with right-wing US provocateur Alex Jones in January, the candidate said the election cancellation was “ordered from abroad and implemented by the globalist system”. BLOOMBERG
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Publish date : 2025-02-18 23:05:00
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