Democracy at stake as populists battle mayors in EU’s troubled east

Welcome back. The election campaigns in Romania and Poland came together this week in the southern Polish city of Zabrze.

George Simion, the ultranationalist frontrunner in Romania’s election, and his Polish counterpart Karol Nawrocki warmly embraced each other on stage as two Trump-supporting patriots fighting for traditional Christian values against a liberal European establishment.

Romania and Poland, the two most populous countries on the eastern flank of the EU and Nato, are in their different ways at a turning point. The choice of voters could strengthen or weaken democratic standards, the rule of law and support for Ukraine and embolden the EU’s eastern awkward squad led by Hungary and Slovakia.

You can reach me at ben.hall@ft.com.

The Nationalists vs The Mayors

Simion, a former football hooligan, stormed to victory in the first round of Romania’s presidential election earlier this month, winning double the vote share of Nicuşor Dan, the centrist mayor of Bucharest, who he now faces in a tight run-off tomorrow.

By coincidence, Nawrocki is likely to come second in the first round of Poland’s presidential contest tomorrow behind Rafał Trzaskowski, the liberal mayor of Warsaw. We will almost certainly have to wait to the second round on June 1 to find out who Poles have chosen as their next head of state. Most opinion polls suggest Trzaskowski is on course to win.

If elected, Trzaskowski would unblock several reforms promised by centre-right prime minister Donald Tusk since he returned to office in late 2023 after eight years of rule by the nationalist conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party. Tusk’s reforms, including measures to restore judicial independence, have been vetoed by Poland’s outgoing PiS-aligned president Andrzej Duda.

Like Duda, Nawrocki, the head of the state Institute for National Remembrance, is allied with the PiS party. Were Nawrocki to win, Tusk’s ambition to put Poland back in Europe’s liberal mainstream would remain stymied and the prime minister would increasingly look a lame duck.

As Aleks Szczerbiak explains in this analysis, Nawrocki’s chances are likely to hinge on this question:

Can Mr Nawrocki turn the election into a referendum on, and effectively channel growing societal discontent with, the Tusk administration? Most Poles feel that the government has failed to deliver on its election promises and Mr Nawrocki has been trying to pin this on to Mr Trzaskowski by dubbing him “Tusk’s deputy”. Or can Mr Trzaskowski turn it into a referendum on whether to remove the last vestiges of Law and Justice’s legacy, thereby rekindling the huge electoral mobilisation that led to the party’s decisive rejection in 2023?

Nawrocki has proved to be a flawed candidate, his campaign dogged by mis-steps including allegations of dishonesty over an apartment he bought from an elderly neighbour. A defeat could rebound against Jarosław Kaczyński, the PiS founder and Tusk’s arch nemesis, and amplify divisions within the party, as my colleague Raphael Minder reports.

Performance without substance

In Romania, there is no question Simion is surfing a wave of public anger and disgust with the establishment parties that have governed the country since the fall of communist Nicolae Ceauşescu in 1989.

Romania has made impressive economic progress since EU accession in 2007, with per capita GDP rising from 44 per cent of the EU average to 78 per cent. But things have got worse for many Romanians in the last five years. Inflation has been the highest in the EU, improvements in educational attainment have gone into reverse and anti-corruption efforts appear to have lost momentum. Between 5 and 8mn Romanians have left the country, many seeking better paid work. Simion won more than 60 per cent of the diaspora vote on May 4.

Tomorrow’s run-off, with no candidate from the mainstream centre-left and centre-right, is according to Oana Popescu-Zamfir, director of the GlobalFocus Center think-tank in Bucharest, “the predictable product of a political class that, over decades, hollowed out its own credibility”.

“Party leaders prioritised loyalty and corruption over competence, opportunism over policy and values, sidelined internal meritocracy, and turned representative democracy into a performance without substance,” she writes for the Carnegie Endowment.

If Simion wins, it would mark an abrupt change of direction for a country that has stuck to a pro-EU, pro-Nato orientation for 35 years. An ultranationalist who is banned from entering Moldova and Ukraine, he opposes further aid for Kyiv and has downplayed the Russian threat to European security. Romania is strategically important for Nato, given its proximity to Ukraine and the Black Sea coast.

A true populist

Like a true populist, Simion has made lavish spending promises he cannot possibly keep given that Romania’s public deficit, at 9 per cent, is the highest in the EU. He even admitted to my colleague Marton Dunai and I that he made outrageous statements only to attract media attention, given that he was starting a party “from zero”.

Simion has more recently tried to reassure Romanians that he has never been pro-Moscow — which would not be popular in a country with a strong anti-Russian tradition — and fully supports Nato. At the same time, he says he would appoint Călin Georgescu as prime minister. Georgescu, an eccentric nationalist and conspiracy theorist with anti-Nato views, won the first round of presidential elections last year, but his victory was annulled because he was found to have benefited from an undisclosed Russian-backed campaign on TikTok.

If elected, Simion could soon collide with reality. He will need to work with other parties to form a stable government that can tackle Romania’s fiscal crisis. If he fails to get to grips with the budget, the financial markets may force him to.

Simion talks up his vice-presidency of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party, alongside Italy’s Giorgia Meloni and Poland’s former PiS prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki, both committed Ukraine supporters. But his positions are closer to those of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, the EU’s disrupter-in-chief, and Slovakia’s Robert Fico.

“The big question for the EU is whether Simion ultimately joins the pragmatic Eurosceptics or ideological hardliners,” say Mujtaba Rahman and Orsolya Raczova of Eurasiagroup in a note to clients.

Democratic vulnerability

Condemning the cancellation of last year’s election, US vice-president JD Vance lamented the fragility of Romania’s democratic process. Romanian officials say the authorities are this time more vigilant to the risks of foreign manipulation. But they still blame a flood of disinformation on social media for exaggerating the coalition government’s shortcomings.

Sorin Ioniță, an analyst at the Expert Forum think-tank in Bucharest which carries out monitoring on behalf of the European Commission, said Romanian-language social media sites were being inundated with bots spewing out information true or false while traditional media has been hollowed out or captured by special interests.

Romania was trying to build a democratic culture without mass media, he said. “We need a new model for our democracy.”

More on this topic

The real culprits for the rise of Romania’s nationalist right are the complacent parties who have ruled since the 1989 revolution, says Alec Russell.

Ben’s pick of the week

Moët Hennessy’s crisis: dubious deals, soaring prices and hubris by Adrienne Klasa