Romania’s pro-EU Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Monday announced his resignation, deepening political turmoil a day after a far-right candidate topped the first round of a tense presidential vote rerun.<\/p>\n
Far-right EU critic George Simion topped Sunday’s election first round, while the ruling coalition’s candidate narrowly lost out to Bucharest’s mayor, Nicusor Dan, for the second spot.<\/p>\n
With the ruling coalition’s candidate Crin Antonescu knocked out of the running, Ciolacu would likely have been replaced by the new president, who appoints the premier.<\/p>\n
Ciolacu said his party would leave the ruling coalition but would probably hold on until after the election run-off, scheduled for May 18 and which is being closely watched by Brussels and Washington.<\/p>\n
Romania, which borders war-torn Ukraine, is an EU and NATO member.<\/p>\n
His Social Democrats (PSD) party leaving the ruling coalition “implicitly leads to my resignation as prime minister”, Ciolacu, 57,\u00a0told reporters after a party meeting.<\/p>\n
“We saw how Romanians voted yesterday (Sunday), which means that the ruling coalition has no legitimacy, at least in this formula,” he added.<\/p>\n
Once the PSD leaves the governing coalition, it would no longer have a parliamentary majority.<\/p>\n
Ciolacu said that his party’s ministers would discuss with their coalition partners whether or not they would remain in the government on an interim basis.<\/p>\n
“The future president would have changed me anyway,” Ciolacu said.<\/p>\n
– ‘Worst possible moment’ –<\/p>\n
Ciolacu’s resignation “comes at the worst possible moment, adding political risks and fears” in a country already struggling with the highest deficit in the EU, 9.3 percent at the end of 2024, according to political analyst Radu Magdin.<\/p>\n
“The political system will re-stabilise after we have political clarity as regards the new president of Romania,” Magdin told AFP, adding that the resignation “gives a boost to Simion who is better than Dan at capitalising on political chaos”.<\/p>\n
Ciolacu said his party would not publicly support either Simion or Dan, instead asking their party supporters to “vote as they wish, according to their own conscience”.<\/p>\n
The Social Democrats’ coalition partners said they were supporting Dan.<\/p>\n
In Sunday’s first round, Simion, who leads the nationalist AUR party, gained almost 41 percent of votes, double the score of the pro-EU Dan, an independent.<\/p>\n
Dan narrowly edged out Antonescu.<\/p>\n
AUR and other far right parties hold around a third of the votes in parliament.<\/p>\n
Ciolacu has ruled out forming a government with AUR as long as he is party president.<\/p>\n
– Trump fan –<\/p>\n
A far-right victory in the second round could mark a shift in the country’s foreign policy.\u00a0The president represents Romania at EU and NATO summits and can veto EU votes.<\/p>\n
Campaigning on a vow to put Romania first, Simion, a fan of US President Donald Trump, has criticised “Brussels’ unelected bureaucrats”, accusing them of having meddled in the Romanian elections.<\/p>\n
In December, Romania’s constitutional court scrapped the presidential ballot after far-right politician Calin Georgescu unexpectedly won the first round.<\/p>\n
The annulment followed allegations of Russian interference and a massive TikTok campaign that emerged in favour of Georgescu.<\/p>\n
Simion has called the annulment “a coup d’etat”. Georgescu was barred from the rerun but two major far-right parties decided to back Simion instead.<\/p>\n
ani\/jza\/bc<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Romania’s pro-EU Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu on Monday announced his resignation, deepening political turmoil a day after a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77608,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[38051,36828,2000,299,5187,33113,38049,36829,38052,38050,23219,1438],"class_list":{"0":"post-77607","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-coalition-partners","9":"tag-crin-antonescu","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-george-simion","14":"tag-marcel-ciolacu","15":"tag-nicusor-dan","16":"tag-party-president","17":"tag-president-of-romania","18":"tag-resignation","19":"tag-romania"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114457667436636936","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}