A massive turnout of 64 percent was reported in the second round of the Romanian presidential elections held on 18 May 2025. Nicușor Dan, the independent candidate supported by the extreme neoliberal Save Romania Union (USR), won with 53.60 percent of the votes. Among the diaspora, over 1.6 million votes, or 55.86 percent, went to the far-right nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) candidate George Simion.
Enikő Vincze is a professor at Babeș-Bolyai University and housing activist based in Cluj, Romania.
The result constituted a significant victory for the neoliberals, after scoring only 21 percent in the first round one week earlier, while Simion garnered 41 percent. This was a surprising turn of events, similar to the first attempt at presidential elections held in November 2024, which were annulled under the pretext of Russian interference after the independent far-right nationalist Călin Georgescu received almost 23 percent. Despite their efforts, the parties of the centrist governing coalition, the Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the National Liberal Party (PNL), emerged as the biggest losers at each stage of these six-month-long presidential elections.
In much of the media coverage of the elections, Simion’s camp has been described as “far-right”, while Dan is presented as a liberal centrist. Yet these labels obscure how the new wave of neoliberalism, as promoted by figures like Dan, fosters the nationalist far-right threat it seeks to contain, while simultaneously implementing extreme right-wing economic measures to redress growth within the frames of capitalist democracy. In that sense, one could argue that both candidates represented strands of right-wing extremism, with Simion standing for its nationalist variety, and Dan its neoliberal incarnation.
This novel political scenario is a regional expression of the global agony of neoliberalism in a capitalist order in transition. While Dan was on the side of foreign investors, advocating for sending military aid to Ukraine and maintaining Romania’s position within the current EU status quo, Simion expressed the interests of the Romanian petty bourgeoisie, denying military support to Ukraine and advocating for a Europe of “sovereign nations.” Both of them agreed with the need for rearmament as part of the ReArmEurope/Readiness 2030 programme and for reshaping the central and local administrative system.
Romania’s current political crisis is characterized by the massive withdrawal of popular trust in traditional parties.
In his first message after the final vote, Dan stated that the “community” that voted for him wanted “more functional state institutions, reduced corruption, a prosperous economic environment, and a society of dialogue.” He referred to Simion’s voters as “a community that wanted a revolution and has to be convinced that the solution to their problems is the reform of the justice and public administration system”. Clearly, he did not understand much of the economic hardship faced by the working classes.
The newly elected president is expected to appoint the prime minister, who will then form a new government. In addition to his political priorities, he will also need to take into account that the majority of seats in the Romanian parliament are divided among representatives of far-right nationalist parties, who occupy 32 percent, and right-wing parties of different kinds, who hold another 32 percent of the seats. Meanwhile, the Social Democrats hold only 22 percent of seats. Governing in such a political constellation and amidst a severe economic crisis would prove difficult for any politician. It will be particularly difficult in Romania, where, in the absence of other alternatives to centrist social-democratic or liberal politics, widespread economic discontent has led wide swathes of the working classes and petty bourgeoisie to drift to the anti-communist far-right nationalists, while, on the side of the extreme neoliberal right, the supposed alternative is an anti-communist antifascism. The victorious camp, although it succeeded in staving off the far-right nationalists this time around, only deepens the crisis over the longer term.
Stagnant Growth and Rising Costs
To understand the context of last weekend’s election, the social situation in Romania is more relevant than any real or imagined “Russian interference”. This is a result of the multiplying effects of the cyclical crisis characteristic of capitalism, starting with the dramatic economic collapse that followed privatization and liberalization in the 1990s, and continuing to the present-day polycrisis. Today, over 5.7 million Romanians live abroad, the majority of whom left the country after the dismantlement of the socialist system. This outward migration was part of the neoliberal European Union’s eastward expansion and the reconfiguration of global capitalism, as it opened up formerly non-capitalist semi-peripheries to private capital seeking new investment opportunities, markets, natural resources, and a cheap, mobile labour force.
Following the country’s slight recovery from the 2008 crisis and subsequent austerity measures, the World Bank classified Romania as a high-income country in 2019. High GDP growth rates in 2021 (5.71 percent) and 2022 (4.1 percent) occurred after a negative GDP growth of 3.61 percent in 2020. The latter reflected a contraction in economic output linked to restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was counterbalanced by state aid for companies, covered by governmental loans and generating public deficits.
Despite the excitement around GDP growth, the rate of poverty and social exclusion in Romania remained around 32 percent in 2023. Romania also consistently exhibits some of the highest rates of in-work poverty in the EU. Although the minimum national income has increased slowly (hovering slightly up to 500 euro), it remains below the cost of a monthly basket of basic goods (estimated at almost 800 euro per person).
For most of Romania’s post-socialist history, dissatisfaction with centre-left leaders, who ruled alone or in coalition with centre-right parties, has been expressed through a sustained anti-communist movement.
The cost-of-living crisis, which began in 2022, has exacerbated this situation. According to Eurostat, in 2023 Romania experienced one of the highest surges in household electricity and gas prices in the EU, with increases of 77 percent and 134 percent. The state subsidized the profits of energy companies by paying 60 percent of their bills, creating a significant hole in the public budget. Moreover, between 2022 and 2024, the country’s inflation rate was generally higher than the EU average: 13.8 percent in 2022, 10.4 in 2023, 5.58 in 2024, and 5.1 in February 2025. Meanwhile, Romania’s real GDP growth slowed to 2.1 percent in 2023.
Currently, the average inflation rate forecast for 2025 is 4.61 percent, although salaries and pensions were frozen by a governmental emergency ordinance at the beginning of the year. Military spending has continued to increase, as evidenced by the 2017 purchase of seven Patriot missile systems from the US for 4 billion US dollars. In 2024, a year marked by four elections (local, European parliamentary, parliamentary, and presidential), Romania’s GDP grew by only 0.9 percent. The country’s debt-to-GDP ratio, which averaged 27.75 percent between 1995 and 2023, rose above 55 percent by the end of 2024. Large public deficits drove this increase in indebtedness, reaching 9.5 percent of GDP at the end of 2024.
This decrease in public spending alongside rising military costs is among the biggest challenges facing the new government-to-be, along with fulfilling the country’s obligations as an EU and NATO member state. Over the next four to seven years, Romania must bring its public deficit below 3 percent, its debt under 50 percent, and simultaneously bolster its military spending to 5 percent of GDP.
Even prior to the 2024 elections, the centrist National Coalition for Romania elaborated and submitted the country’s Structural Budget Plan for the Medium Term 2025–2031 to the European Commission. This plan includes adjustment measures aimed at decreasing the public deficit by reducing spending in the public sector. Additionally, in April 2025, the Supreme Council of Romania’s Defence mandated the Minister of National Defence participate in negotiations that will prepare for the June NATO summit and to commit Romania to participating in the ReArmEurope/Readiness 2030 EU programme by increasing public spending on rearmament to 3.5 percent of GDP and accessing new loans for this purpose.
The rising costs of living and growing inequalities have severely affected the working classes, while political decision-makers have not adequately addressed these issues and have not been transparent regarding two central matters affecting the country. Namely, Romania’s involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia, and plans to address the country’s public and trade deficits. The extreme neoliberals, spanning across political parties and voicing the interests of the business sector and financial markets, blamed the centrist governing coalition for excessive spending on salaries and pensions, arguing that this led the country to a disastrous economic situation, close to bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the nationalist far right condemned “the system” for subordinating Romania’s interests to foreign capital, claimed respect for “the people,” and sustained that economic patriotism would be the solution to the country’s economic woes.
Anti-Corruption and Anti-Communism as a Response to the Political Crisis
Romania’s current political crisis is characterized by the massive withdrawal of popular trust in traditional parties such as PSD and PNL. These parties facilitated the transformation of state socialism into capitalism and contributed to the crises resulting from the subsequent neoliberalization of economic and social policies in the country. Across Romania, there is a general feeling of discontent across various social classes regarding the country’s leadership. The working classes, comprising different occupational and income segments, are angry and exhausted after 35 years of recurring crises. Even today, the average income does not ensure a decent living for workers. In cities like Cluj, for example, where the mean income is higher than the national average, workers spend over 40 percent of their income on housing costs. People in such situations could vote for Dan, either because they considered him the lesser evil compared to Simion, or because they have internalized the norms of liberal society that suggest they must work harder to deserve a home in expensive cities, or because they have not yet found adequate alliances through which to express their dissatisfaction.
Meanwhile, the ruling classes are dissatisfied with the mainstream parties because they have not entirely eliminated state-owned companies and the social security system, and failed to sufficiently privatize public healthcare, education, the pension system, or the energy sector. They readily associate themselves with the USR and the election winner, Dan, although the AUR made significant efforts to court the petty bourgeoisie, which is also part of the capitalist ruling class.
The neoliberal status quo is portrayed as inevitable by the liberal antifascist position, justified by a compulsory admiration for an idealized European Union as Romania’s destiny and natural geopolitical family.
For most of Romania’s post-socialist history, dissatisfaction with centre-left leaders, who ruled alone or in coalition with centre-right parties, has been expressed through a sustained anti-communist movement. The same was true in this election, with Dan becoming the subject of a strong civil society mobilization centred on anti-communism, drawing on traditions dating back to the 1990s. Some of the same protest songs that could be heard at the big protests in Bucharest and other cities back then re-emerged at the pro-Dan rallies earlier this month. One popular refrain goes, “Better a vagabond than an activist, better dead than a Communist.” The nationalist Simion sang the same verses in 2006, against Ion Iliescu, the first leader of the Romanian Social Democrats. Back then, he was a civic activist in the Noii Golani (“New Vagabonds”) group, prior to the formation of the Association 2012 and his reactionary and irredentist party, AUR, in 2019.
Between 2015 and 2019, an intense wave of anti-communist mobilization manifested in a series of anti-corruption campaigns. Dan’s Save Bucharest Association, which transformed into the party Union to Save Bucharest (USB) in 2015 and subsequently became USR, was part of it. The USR campaign “Without Criminal Records in Public Offices”, which boosted the party into parliament in 2016, was supported by the anti-corruption actions of then-President Traian Băsescu and Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate. After its establishment, USR continued its anti-PSD mission through the #rezist protests in 2017 and the “revolution of our generation” in 2018, very much in line with PNL president Klaus Iohannis. Whenever they happened, these anti-corruption efforts were directed against the state in order to justify its increasing withdrawal from the provision of public services and goods after decades in which public property on means of production had already been destroyed by privatization. In this way, anti-communism — whether from the extreme neoliberals or the nationalist far-right — serves to stabilize the capitalist order.
Between Liberal and Socialist Antifascism
The anti-communist and anti-corruption messaging of recent elections was complemented this time around by a kind of liberal antifascism, which made clearer than ever that liberal civil society is a crucial pillar for the capitalist regime to function. Its representatives belong to a particular segment of the middle classes that advocates for its privileges within the system. By doing so, they indirectly or directly support the interests of businesses, which, in turn, may already be or could become their corporate sponsors in the future, such as banks or real estate companies. At the same time, by associating fascism and communism as analogous manifestations of authoritarianism, they delegitimize the very notion of a socialist alternative to capitalism.
In this context, the extreme neoliberal arguments for political stability sustain the reproduction of the status quo, while the far-right nationalist parties can be seen as a product of that status quo’s growing dysfunction. As neoliberal capitalism declines, its managers increasingly invoke the fascist threat to justify why liberal democracy should become more authoritarian, even undemocratic, claiming that they are the only ones who can save the country from the greatest threat it has faced in decades. They promise that, after the fascist danger disappears, they will at least acknowledge social problems such as poverty, inequality, and lost dignity, which the nationalist parties sought to address with their far-right agenda. In that sense, structurally, fascism, as an instrument of capital, is used by both strands of right-wing extremism to muzzle protests against capitalism.
The liberal consensus around Dan attracted a number of figures from the social-democratic and progressive Left by appealing to binary opposition.
The liberal antifascist forces in Romania, standing alongside the neoliberal right, are pushing for further privatization across economic and non-economic sectors, a reduction in the state apparatus, and even more cuts to investment in public goods and services, as well as a degree of reindustrialization fuelled by military spending. These proposals are designed to inject new lifeblood into capitalism’s ailing body. Yet the extreme neoliberals fail to see, or perhaps do not want to see, that such interventions also possess a certain fascistic quality, underlain as they are by violent structural processes like exploitation, dispossession, and oppression of various kinds. At most, they begrudgingly acknowledge that liberal policies might have neglected people’s material concerns in recent decades, while expressing dismay that so many of them express their anger through the voice of far-right nationalists as a result.
The neoliberal status quo is portrayed as inevitable by the liberal antifascist position, justified by a compulsory admiration for an idealized European Union as Romania’s destiny and natural geopolitical family, alongside a vigorous dose of Russophobia and a fear of anything that appears to threaten Western hegemony in the current world. Liberal civil society tells Romanian citizens that only a more extreme neoliberal leadership can fix the problems created by the prior centrist coalition. Because there is no credible socialist or even left-leaning alternative in Romanian politics, many Romanians channelled their discontent towards a nationalist agenda centred on family, religion, nation, and economic freedom for the Romanian petty bourgeoisie.
The liberal consensus around Dan attracted a number of figures from the social-democratic and progressive Left by appealing to binary oppositions such as democracy versus authoritarianism, Europeanism versus nationalism, liberalism versus fascism, dialogue versus violence, and the EU versus China or Russia. Consequently, these figures failed to articulate a critical stance towards the extreme neoliberal policies to come. Instead, they stood united with the liberals against the nationalist candidate as a stand-in for all the threats, real or imagined, one may encounter today, whether fascist, Putinist, Trumpist, or “anti-European”. Some from this part of the Romanian Left even joined in the liberal chorus condemning socialists’ criticisms of capitalism, the EU, militarism, and austerity, as well as the argument that fascist violence is a manifestation of capitalism’s structural violence.
The new socialists do not yet have a political party, nevertheless, they exist as a loose network of individuals and informal groups. They cannot act as an electoral alternative, at least for now, but they are currently the only voices putting forward an internationalist, anti-fascist, and anti-militarist socialist alternative to the turbulent and decaying status quo. In that sense, they represent Romania’s best hope for someday breaking out of the liberalism-versus-fascism or neoliberalism-versus-nationalism binary that dominates politics today.