Romanians will have a busy day voting on June 9. Not only can they vote for the European Parliament (EP) but they will also vote in local elections.
In fact, in 2024 Romanians will be busy voting a lot of the time. The year has been christened the ‘year of elections’ because the country will also choose its president in September and then hold parliamentary elections in December.
So 2024 will determine the future of the country for the next few years.
The results of an INSCOP opinion poll published on May 28 showed that the ruling coalition of left-wing Social Democrats and the center-right Liberals, which has been in office since late 2021, should emerge as victors in the EP elections with 43.7% of the vote.
But all eyes are on the party predicted to come second. The Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), a populist hard-right group founded just five years ago, could get, according to the poll, 17.5% of the vote.
The figure reflects a surge of support for the AUR, which first entered the Romanian parliament in 2020 after getting 9 percent of the vote.
Entering the political fray under the slogan ‘Make Europe Great Again,’ the AUR’s manifesto rests on four pillars: the Orthodox faith, the nation, the family and freedom.
Woven into this is a conservative, nationalist and Eurosceptic—rather anti-EU—ideology, which has struck a chord with people who feel they have been left behind by Romania’s uneven economic development and have deepening misgivings over the direction the country is travelling.
The AUR has also mounted a good election campaign; getting out onto the streets to talk to people and hear their concerns while also embracing social media to bring in younger voters.
But they have also gained from mounting disillusionment with the ruling coalition and the traditional opposition parties.
“The governing coalition is acting like a cartel at the moment and they are trying to reduce the space of democratic competition by posing joint candidates [in the elections] whenever they can,” Oana Popescu-Zamfir, a former state secretary for EU affairs for Romania, and currently director of GlobalFocus Center, an independent foreign policy think-tank, told TVP World.
“They [the government] realize that they’ve lost touch with the electorate to a large extent; lost popularity. So, what they are trying to do is—rather than increase their capacity for representation by reaching out—marginalize the competition in any way they can.
“The reaction will be a protest vote and people will turn to the AUR because it’s the only anti-establishment party, not necessarily because they resonate with its values,” she continued.
“In the European elections people are saying ‘we’re going to vote for the AUR because we want to stick it to the government’.”
If the electorate really does “stick it to the government,” and the AUR gets 20 percent, it could win five to seven seats in the European Parliament, and this could have an impact in Brussels.
George Simion, the party leader, has already said that his party will join the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the parliament. Not only would this bolster the ECR but it could add to the influence of the conservative right wing that is predicted to soar in the next European Parliament owing to the rise of the populist right, not just in Romania but across the continent.
So 2024 will determine the future of the country for the next few years.
The results of an INSCOP opinion poll published on May 28 showed that the ruling coalition of left-wing Social Democrats and the center-right Liberals, which has been in office since late 2021, should emerge as victors in the EP elections with 43.7% of the vote.
But all eyes are on the party predicted to come second. The Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), a populist hard-right group founded just five years ago, could get, according to the poll, 17.5% of the vote.
The figure reflects a surge of support for the AUR, which first entered the Romanian parliament in 2020 after getting 9 percent of the vote.
Entering the political fray under the slogan ‘Make Europe Great Again,’ the AUR’s manifesto rests on four pillars: the Orthodox faith, the nation, the family and freedom.
Woven into this is a conservative, nationalist and Eurosceptic—rather anti-EU—ideology, which has struck a chord with people who feel they have been left behind by Romania’s uneven economic development and have deepening misgivings over the direction the country is travelling.
The AUR has also mounted a good election campaign; getting out onto the streets to talk to people and hear their concerns while also embracing social media to bring in younger voters.
But they have also gained from mounting disillusionment with the ruling coalition and the traditional opposition parties.
“The governing coalition is acting like a cartel at the moment and they are trying to reduce the space of democratic competition by posing joint candidates [in the elections] whenever they can,” Oana Popescu-Zamfir, a former state secretary for EU affairs for Romania, and currently director of GlobalFocus Center, an independent foreign policy think-tank, told TVP World.
“They [the government] realize that they’ve lost touch with the electorate to a large extent; lost popularity. So, what they are trying to do is—rather than increase their capacity for representation by reaching out—marginalize the competition in any way they can.
“The reaction will be a protest vote and people will turn to the AUR because it’s the only anti-establishment party, not necessarily because they resonate with its values,” she continued.
“In the European elections people are saying ‘we’re going to vote for the AUR because we want to stick it to the government’.”
If the electorate really does “stick it to the government,” and the AUR gets 20 percent, it could win five to seven seats in the European Parliament, and this could have an impact in Brussels.
George Simion, the party leader, has already said that his party will join the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group in the parliament. Not only would this bolster the ECR but it could add to the influence of the conservative right wing that is predicted to soar in the next European Parliament owing to the rise of the populist right, not just in Romania but across the continent.
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