Why the EU and Nato fear Romania’s hard-right presidential frontrunner

Good morning. Hard-right nationalist George Simion triumphed in yesterday’s first round of Romania’s presidential election, winning around 40 per cent of the vote in a concerning result for the country’s EU and Nato allies.

Below, our man in Bucharest assesses Simion’s chances to win the May 18 run-off. And the EU’s chief trade negotiator tells us he needs more staff and less red tape to handle the surge of interest in negotiating new deals.

Alarm bells

Hard-right leader George Simion appeared to have strolled to a comfortable victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential elections according to provisional results released overnight. But he will need to win a run-off two weeks from now to actually become president — which is not a foregone conclusion, writes Marton Dunai.

Context: Romania repeated its presidential vote after nixing the previous election in December. Romanian authorities suspected Russia had meddled on behalf of obscure soil engineer Călin Georgescu, who was a conspicuous admirer of President Vladimir Putin. The US was not pleased about the do-over, with vice-president JD Vance calling Romanian evidence supporting the annulment “flimsy”.

Simion, the youthful leader of the hard-right AUR party, has risen from hell-raising football hooligan to full-blown Donald Trump cheerleader now banned from entering neighbouring Ukraine and Moldova.

Simion has unnerved EU capitals who see him as a subverter of Romania’s standing as a reliable Euro-Atlantic ally, a cornerstone of Nato’s eastern flank in the Black Sea region, and a key route for trade with Ukraine.

Simion will face off against Nicușor Dan after the liberal mayor of Bucharest won 20.9 per cent of the vote to sneak into second place above centrist candidate Crin Antonescu.

Dan’s chance of victory will depend on his ability to convert Antonescu’s votes and form a mainstream alliance.

“I’m not too worried about such an alliance,” Simion told the Financial Times yesterday. “This is only a smoke bomb, a diversion [from the fact] that I’m not the extremist, the hooligan, the isolationist they are portraying me to be.”

Indeed, Simion could also pick up voters from former premier Victor Ponta, a leftwing politician turned Trump fan, who won 13.3 per cent yesterday.

Romania’s credit rating has recently been downgraded, it runs the EU’s highest budget deficit and has failed to meet conditions to release certain development funds.

Simion said he was not a threat to the country’s direction, despite the company he keeps: “I am the guarantee the free world has that [Romania] will not change the course . . . I will do whatever I can to empower Nato.”

Chart du jour: Exposed

Many of the world’s most climate-vulnerable cities are in Europe, as wildfire and flood risks rise due to extreme weather.

Staffing up, slimming down

The EU’s trade tsar wants more troops and simpler deal frameworks as he races to sign as many pacts with third countries seeking new friends in the face of US President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Context: The EU is negotiating trade deals with a raft of countries including India, Indonesia, the United Arab Emirates, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. That wave of activity, accelerated by Trump’s tariffs, follows the EU inking a long-mooted deal with the Mercosur bloc and an updated pact with Mexico.

Brussels is also reviving a potential strategic partnership with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a group of 12 Indo-Pacific countries, the FT reported yesterday.

As such, Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade commissioner, wants the budget for a larger army of trade negotiators and a simpler bureaucratic process to approve new deals.

“It’s true that to accelerate the deals we are looking for . . . even more people in DG Trade, but also we are looking at what can we do to streamline the procedures for approval of these agreements between the Council and European parliament,” Šefčovič said in an interview that also revealed Brussels’s offer to the US for a peace deal on tariffs.

DG Trade is the commission department in charge of trade policy.

“On these things we have now much more support, because everyone recognises that it’s a paradigm shift,” he said.

Šefčovič said much of the urgency was coming directly from his boss, commission president Ursula von der Leyen.

“[Von der Leyen] is in permanent touch not only with our member states, but with all the negotiating partners, who are calling her: ‘Tell Maroš to negotiate faster!’,” Šefčovič said, laughing.

“And of course, our DG Trade is a little bit desperate because they thought that I was joking when I was telling them that we would like to see one deal per month,” he added. “Until they heard it from the president.”

What to watch today

1. European parliament plenary session begins in Strasbourg.

2. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen meets French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris.

3. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visits Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.

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• Euro vs dollar: Trump has created a chance for the euro to rival the dollar, writes Martin Sandbu. Now EU leaders must act on the opportunity.

• 3-5-8: The European Central Bank is gently encouraging its employees to leave their jobs and find new roles quicker.