Romanians backing ultranationalist candidate George Simion in this weekend’s presidential election will be voting for a “culture of violence and hate”, according to his centrist opponent.
Nicuşor Dan, a pro-EU political independent who is mayor of Bucharest, said the run-off vote on May 18 presented voters with a stark, once-in-a-generation choice on the country’s strategic orientation, its economic policy and the nature of its politics.
While Simion had a history of “violent manifestations”, Dan would bring a “culture of dialogue and some sense of harmony in society” to the role of head of state, he said. But Romanian democracy was “stable enough” to withstand a Simion presidency, he told the Financial Times in an interview.
Simion, a one-time football hooligan and nationalist agitator turned leader of the far-right AUR party, won a convincing 41 per cent in the first round on May 4, while Dan scraped into the second round with 21 per cent, leaving him with a mountain to climb.
As a lawmaker, Simion has had several violent outbursts, on one occasion threatening to “sexually assault” a fellow far-right MP while she was filming the altercation.
The mayor’s campaign appears to have gained momentum in recent days. He put in a confident performance against Simion in a televised debate over the weekend.
According to an AtlasIntel opinion poll for HotNews, a Romanian news outlet, Dan and Simion are neck and neck on 48 per cent ahead of Sunday’s run-off. The poll included Romanians abroad, who voted heavily for Simion on May 4.
Dan, who has a doctorate in mathematics from Sorbonne university in Paris, made his name campaigning against corrupt real estate deals in Bucharest before being elected as the city’s mayor in 2020. Earnest and softly spoken, the 55-year-old presents a sharply different profile to the 38-year-old Simion, a brash populist with a sharp tongue. Nicuşor translates as “Tiny Nick”.
Dan said in the upcoming vote that Romanians would be choosing to continue to face west, as part of the European mainstream, or turn to the east with Simion, ending Romanian aid to Ukraine and Moldova, both partly under Russian occupation.
Embracing the Maga-style anti-globalist rhetoric of the US president, Simion claims he is Donald Trump’s candidate while his opponent was Ursula von der Leyen’s, referring to the European Commission president. Dan said he gladly accepted the characterisation.
Dan also warned that foreign investors could rapidly lose confidence in Romania if Simion won the presidency — and even more so if he then appointed Călin Georgescu as prime minister as he has pledged.
“Mr Georgescu is even worse. He’s sad many many stupid things,” Dan said.
Georgescu, an eccentric nationalist with anti-Nato views, was barred from standing as a presidential candidate after his first-round victory in November was annulled by the constitutional court over campaign finance violations and allegations of Russian interference via a secret influence operation on TikTok.
At 9 per cent of GDP, Romania has the highest public deficit in the EU and its currency weakened last week after Simion’s first-round win, passing through five lei to the euro — a psychological threshold for many Romanians.
Dan said he would restore fiscal order by cutting down on state spending, shedding jobs at state-owned enterprises, carrying out necessary reforms to release EU funds and clamping down on tax evasion.
He added that Simion had made unfinanced promises, including on nationalising the oil company and building cut-price housing, and previously accused western companies of sucking the wealth out of the Romania.
“Many of his proposals are against the free and open market for foreign capital,” Dan said. “It’s a bad signal for foreign investors.”
Romanians, he said, would judge him by his record as an activist, when he took to court more than 500 cases of illegal development in Bucharest, and as mayor of a city of 3mn people. He eliminated a fiscal deficit that had reached 75 per cent of the city’s revenues and focused his efforts of improving infrastructure and protecting green spaces.
He co-founded the reformist, pro-EU Save Romania Union party before falling out with its other leaders and running for mayor as an independent.
Dan criticised the record of Klaus Iohannis, the centre-right president who resigned earlier this year after a decade in office and whose tenure encapsulated for many Romanians the exhaustion of a political caste.
Iohannis failed to explain properly to Romanians about the measures taken during the pandemic or why supporting Ukraine was vital for Romania’s own security, Dan said. “Romanians understood very well that he gave up.”
“There were many mistakes,” Dan said. “The biggest one is that he neglected totally, at least in the last six, seven, eight years the anti-corruption fight.”
Simion has tried to present Dan as part of a political establishment that is despised by many Romanians for its mismanagement and corruption.
But Dan was not endorsed by any major party in the campaign yet overtook the ruling coalition’s joint candidate to finish second.
“It is clear I have been outside the system for 20 years,” he said.
