Romanian pro-EU parties unite to crowd out far-right candidate Georgescu

Four major Romanian political parties formed a coalition on Wednesday night, vowing to keep Romania on a pro-EU and pro-NATO path.

The extraordinary agreement comes as ultranationalist, pro-Russian Călin Georgescu leads polls ahead of the country’s presidential election on Sunday.

The Social Democrats, the Liberals, the reformist Save Romania Union (USR), the Hungarian minority party UDMR and representatives of other ethnic minorities said in a joint statement they wanted to prevent international isolation for Romania and maintain economic development and combat the rising cost of living.

The coalition means that the four parties, along with the ethnic minority representatives, will together hold a majority in parliament and will be able to push for a prime minister from among their ranks.

More talks are to come on the governance aims of the parliamentary coalition, and on who will be prime minister, though current PM Marcel Ciolacu of the Social Democrats could stay on.

The parties managed to fend off an outright victory by far-right parties in a parliamentary election this past Sunday. But the strength of the radical vote, which brought together three far-right parties in the parliament, suggests that ultranationalist Georgescu could still win the presidency this Sunday. 

Romanian polling agency CURS predicted he would win 57.8 percent of the vote against reformist candidate Elena Lasconi of USR. 

Lasconi, who would be Romania’s first woman president if she wins, has vowed to keep the country aligned with the EU and NATO and warned that a Georgescu victory could push the country back toward Russia and the dark days of dictatorship.

The coalition of pro-EU parties called on Romanians to vote for a European path on Sunday.

The leaders of the National Liberal Party and the Hungarian minority party had already announced their support for Lasconi.

PM Ciolacu, whom Lasconi edged out of the presidential runoff in the first round of voting on Nov. 24, announced today in a Facebook post that he was also supporting her.

“We have already started building a pro-European parliamentary and government majority that will support Mrs. Elena Lasconi for the Dec. 8 vote,” Ciolacu wrote.

His statement came soon after President Klaus Iohannis, of the Liberal party, agreed on Wednesday to declassify intelligence information showing that Georgescu had benefitted from a coordinated TikTok campaign meant to boost his popularity ahead of the first round of the presidential election. It’s a playbook Russia used in Ukraine before invading it.

Ciolacu, who was aware of the information but couldn’t speak publicly about it before it was declassified, said Georgescu’s campaign had broken the law through artificial social media exposure, and called on the Romanian authorities “to do their job.”

TikTok and the Georgescu campaign didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.