Local elections overshadow EU vote in Romania

The European elections are taking a back seat in Romania as local elections will be held on the same day, while the far-right AUR party – expected to rank second – is still unsure which EU parliamentary group it could join due to an ongoing spat with Viktor Orban’s Fidesz.

While the majority of Romanians support the EU and recognise the benefits of joining in 2007, they lack an understanding of how the European institutions work.

In previous campaigns, Romanian candidates for the European Parliament tended to focus on domestic issues, resulting in low turnout compared to other elections.

However, this year, merging the EU elections with local elections has effectively sidelined European issues, even crucial issues in Romanian politics such as Schengen.

This is partly due to the lack of televised debates involving representatives of all the major parties and the fact that some politicians are standing for both local and European elections.

The former mayor of Bucharest, Gabriela Firea, who is third on the joint PSD (S&D) and PNL (EPP) list, is also seeking re-election as mayor of the capital and is avoiding discussing European issues, focusing solely on the local elections.

The United Right Alliance—USR (Renew), PMP (EPP), and Forța Dreptei (EPP)—is struggling to present a unified message because it comes from different European political families.

Their main message is that they are the true Romanian right-wing, liberal force, even in meetings with Romanian communities in the EU.

Despite its good results in the polls, even the far-right AUR plays down European issues.

The party, which targets mainly rural areas and focuses on local elections, makes minimal reference to the EU elections, with campaign posters featuring historical figures such as Stefancel Mare or Vlad Tepes instead of candidates.

AUR is the only parliamentary party in Romania not affiliated with a European political group. The first MEP on the list, Cristian Terheș, belongs to the ECR group but is a member of the Romanian National Conservative Party (PNCR).

Latest polls

According to polls conducted by Europe Elects, Euractiv’s polling partner, the PSD-PNL (S&D—EPP) alliance would win around 45% of the vote in the EU elections, followed by the far-right AUR with around 22%, the United Right Alliance with 13%, and UDMR with 5%.

Neither this poll nor polls conducted by Romanian polling organisations does Renew Europe’s REPER, which currently has five MEPs, exceed 3%.

MEPs Nicolae Ștefănuță, vice-president of the European Greens, and Vlad Gheorghe, former member of USR (Renew), are in the same situation.

As a result, the PSD would increase its number of MEPs from eight to 11, while the Liberals would lose four seats (from 14 to 10).

The Renew party would secure four seats, while its electoral alliance partners – Forța Dreptei and PMP – would each bring one MEP to the EPP.

The far-right AUR party could potentially have seven MEPs, plus current MEP Cristian Terheș, a PNCR (ECR) member, who is the top candidate on AUR’s list.

However, in the last two months, internal polls have shown that AUR’s support has declined to around 16-17%.

According to Remus Ştefureac, director of INSCOP Research, “an important factor will be the votes from the diaspora, which will influence the final scores of the parties.”

AUR in ECR: the Fidesz factor

The far-right AUR party leader George Simion has tried to join the ECR and has even attended some of its meetings in the past.

VOX representatives expressed “shock” at his behaviour and accused him of falsely claiming to represent Romania alongside the PNȚCD at the summit.

AUR was also not invited to a far-right political conference organised in Brussels with the support of Hungarian groups backed by Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in April.

According to Vice-President of Romania’s far-right AUR party Adrian Axinia, Orban’s Fidesz has somehow paralysed AUR’s application to the ECR party, ongoing since 2021, due to Orbán’s close ties with and influence over ‘national-conservative’ forces.

“They know that we are willing and open for dialogue to identify some common goals (…) they [Fidesz] are unwilling to have a dialogue”, he told Euractiv earlier this week.

AUR has a long-standing feud with Fidesz due to the Romanian party’s hawkish position against the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (RMDSZ), representing the country’s Hungarian minority located mostly in Transylvania.

Simion refrains from direct criticism of Orban’s party but vehemently targets the UDMR, which has close ties to Fidesz, arguing that it is “a hideous chauvinistic creature”.

Fidesz’s political director, Balázs Orbán, told Euractiv last week that “the European right cannot and would not want to partner with a political party that acts violently against a national minority in Transylvania”.

(Euractiv.ro – Edited by Charles Szumski/Alice Taylor)

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