Who suits Romania’s regional ambitions better – Georgescu or Lasconi?

Georgi Markov, Bulgarian National Radio, 26 November 2024

The host of the “Something More” programme on Bulgarian National Radio’s Horizon programme interviewed on 26 November 2024 two of the leading Bulgarian experts on Romanian political life – former Bulgarian ambassador to Romania Valentin Radomirski and the editor of Radio Bulgaria’s Romanian section Vladimir Mitev – about the Romanian presidential and parliamentary elections. The three of them talked about the reasons for the surprising result of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections, about the possible changes in Romanian foreign policy in case of a victory of Calin Georgescu in the presidential elections, about the mobilisation of young Romanians in support of Elena Lasconi and about the influence of the old elites of the Club of Rome to which Calin Georgescu belonged.

Georgi Markov: A far-right critic of NATO and the leader of a centre-right opposition party will stand in the presidential election in Romania on 8 December 2024. Calin Georgescu, identified as a pro-Russian candidate, wins the first round with 22.95% against Elena Lasconi, considered a pro-EU candidate, who garners 19.17% support. We will talk in the next few minutes about what lies ahead politically for Romania, but also for the European Union, assuming that Calin Georgescu becomes President of Romania. We have with us in the studio of the Horizon programme and the programme Something More Mr Valentin Radomirski, diplomat, international relations expert and former Bulgarian ambassador to Romania. Hello and welcome.

Valentin Radomirski: Good day to you and your listeners.

My colleague Vladimir Mitev from the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria is here too. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon.

Let us start with the following topic. All the analysts like you have been saying these days that this first round has perhaps come as a great surprise to Romanian political life and, perhaps, to Romanian society.Were these results a surprise to you, Mr Radomirski?

In a sense, yes. From the point of view that, before the first round, the opinion polls showed very different results. From that point of view, it was a surprise to us – all the bystanders who only read the material that is published in the press.

On the other hand, at least for me personally, it was not such a big surprise, because Romania is another country in which we see the trend of voters, disappointed with the government, doing something unexpected for the government itself or for the so-called status quo. This was also seen in the elections in Moldova, in Georgia. It was even seen in the elections in France, in Germany, in the cases of Alternative for Germany, with Le Pen, and it was even seen in the United States. So we have a common geopolitical trend. For a number of reasons, it is not highlighted by a number of analysts because it leads to serious conclusions about the state of the system in which we live and, more precisely, whether it is fit for the present world or no longer.

And now to Vladimir Mitev. It struck me that the day before the elections, it seemed as if Calin Georgescu was considered to be someone who would not even be in the charts. It made an impression that, when the main candidates were being listed in Romania, the most prominent name, which our public may have remembered, was that of the current Prime Minister, Marcel Ciolacu. What is this due to? We all already understood the phenomenon of TikTok…

First we have to say that Calin Georgescu has been making the rounds in the media in Romania for many years. And there have always been expectations around his name. I remember sometime in 2016-2017 talking to people who, seeing him on national TV, commented that something was going to happen to this guy and someobdy is “grooming” him for a role. I.e. he’s not a new personality. He belongs to certain elites. And I have already had the opportunity to say in some Bulgarian media that he has been linked in the past to the Club of Rome, a very prestigious organisation of the old elites in Romania. It includes, for example, Sergiu Celac, who is the former leader of Ceausescu, and also Mugur Issarescu, who is the longest-serving central bank governor in the world and is still on duty.

So Georgescu has his positions in Romanian society or state. But what he did now was to attract the protest vote. That is to say, there is an objectively existing dissatisfaction in society, which was linked to the fact that a kind of stabilocracy was being installed in Romania, a regime that is found in many Balkan countries and was particularly popular under Merkel. In Bulgaria, too, it was there. There was a calm in politics. Power was held firmly by these parties, or this party, which somehow coalesced even with the state.In the case of Romania, it was two parties, the Social Democratic Party and the National Liberal Party. There was nowhere for a challenge to power to come from. What happened in recent years was that it was calm in public. Money was being absorbed. Roads were being built. This probably sounds familiar to us too (it was like this during the reign of Boyko Borissov until 2021 – ed.). But in Romania there remained two large groups of citizens, among whom, in my opinion, discontent was growing. One were the sovereignists. Now we see that the two candidates Simion and Georgescu have about 37-38% together.

The other category was civil society, the NGO sector. There are investigative media in Romania – that’s one difference from the situation here. In Romania there is more investigative media and a culture of disclosure. These media denounced the leaders of the stableocracy – the rotating Prime Ministers Ciuca and Ciolacu, as well as President Iohannis for their various sins. And in the end, we now see how these two sectors, which were unhappy, squeezed the Ciuca-Ciolacu regime from both sides. None of the cadres of this regime made it to the second round.That is to say, there has been a change in Romania.

It is time for another very legitimate question. I will put it to Valentin Radomirski. The question relates to foreign policy. Analysts are beginning to emphasise that, ultimately, the results of the elections, regardless of which of the two candidates wins, will have an impact on Romania’s foreign policy, especially in terms of the country’s support for Ukraine.What might this influence be, assuming hypothetically that Calin Georgescu becomes President of Romania?

If Georgescu becomes president, he will naturally try to implement at least some of what he has said during the election campaign and before. And he has said that he does not support the war in Ukraine. He believes that the aid that is being given to the Ukrainians is something that is being taken away from the Romanian people. He is against participation in the European Union in the way that Romania is now participating, because he believes that Romanian interests are not being respected.

However, if the parties and movements that support him do not win the parliamentary elections. Mr Mitev, for whom I have respect, explained about the party of Simion, of which, incidentally, Georgescu was also honorary president in the past. Its candidate, George Simion, separately from Georgescu, also received a large percentage in the elections. The AUR party is now backing him for the second round. If the sovereignist parties win the parliamentary elections, then we can talk possibly about some change in foreign policy. Moreover, traditionally, analysts these days note that this is almost a pro-Russian, Putinist candidate and so on, and there is alarm in terms of this sort of thing, especially in circles linked to the European People’s Party in Brussels. I think that this is exaggerated because what Georgescu has stated (i.e. rather the sovereignists have stated – ed.) in some of his statements is the desire for Romania to take back lands that are now in Moldova, in Ukraine, I think this would go against the views of the leadership in Moscow. So, you can’t exactly talk about such a thing. The other point is that, perhaps, together with Orban, together with Fico, perhaps with some other leaders in the European Union, he could form a much more substantial opposition to some of the actions of Brussels, which are even now meeting resistance.In my view, we should not expect dramatic changes in foreign policy, because it remains to be seen what kind of world policy Trump will pursue, and a lot will depend on that.

Let me also ask you – where does that leave the conversation about Romania’s future foreign policy, Donlad Trump’s new mandate next year?

It is a very difficult question, because we see how literally in days things change. In other programmes before the elections in the States, I said that there is going to be the most difficult period from the date of the elections until 20 January 2025. In America, this is called the lame duck, because we have a President who has all the credentials, we have an elected President who has no credentials yet, but we do not really know who is in charge.The two teams start to coordinate their actions, but who determines and what is said to the two presidents and who determines exactly the actions nobody knows. In history, it’s been known for some pretty heavy stuff to happen during these stages of a handover like this. We have seen that now with the decision that has been discussed for more than eight months to give Ukraine permission to launch long-range missile attacks on targets in Russia. We can expect more things like this.The policy of such countries will depend on such actions, even as Romania, which is a medium-sized country, one of the large countries, the seventh in the European Union, an essential entity within NATO, especially in terms of the new Black Sea policy of the United States. You know that a new US Black Sea strategy was adopted this year. Romania has a special place there.

And now I would like to ask you both, starting with Vladimir Mitev, for your prediction, to what extent the forthcoming parliamentary elections in Romania on 1 December, which will precede the second round of the presidential vote, could tip the scales one way or the other? Or is this type of prediction becoming a little dangerous or unpredictable after what we have seen in the first round, based on opinion polls?

I would rather not make a prediction at this point, including precisely because the pollsters were wrong by over 15% in the first round. What we are seeing at the moment, and what can be seen on Facebook by us standing in Bulgaria, is that there is a very large mobilisation going on in both directions in Romania. That is to say, what I was saying, this stableocratic centre has collapsed. We have two poles and each pole is now mobilising its people against the opponents.I am trying to look at the situation from a little bit of a distance. There is a lot of Western European investment in Romania. Romanian cultural and academic elites are very Eurocentric. And the Romanian secret services, the Romanian security and defence sector in general, are an important element of NATO. So, as Mr Radomirski said, it is hard for me to imagine that such a big change is possible, whoever wins. I mean, a change from what it is now.

Romania recently signed a defence cooperation treaty with the UK. There are many diplomatic initiatives in which Romania is something of a contractor for the region. It is involved in many projects, including related to the Republic of Moldova. But I can add something else if you like. I have noticed in conversations with Romanian experts on international relations that they have a certain attitude that Romania should be more influential in its region. And it is interesting who could offer such a more influential role than the politicians who will be elected.

And for me, in particular, there is something else interesting. Mircea Geoană had a very low score in these elections, and he was the favourite before they started. He went into them as the second man in NATO, so maybe the idea was that he would look somewhat like Donald Tusk or Radoslaw Sikorski, someone who seems to have strong Western contacts. But in time it was revealed that his former campaign chief had a business in common with a pro-Kremlin Russian businessman, which is also interesting to consider. And eventually there were a lot of revelations about Geoană. He made a lot of blunders. But I do wonder if, and I think it’s reasonable to wonder if Geoană’s constituents and the forces in general that were betting on Geoană at the beginning of the campaign, bet on Georgescu in some way at the end of it.

Mr Radomirski, Vladimir Mitev found it difficult to say whether there could be any realistic forecast at all of the results of these elections. What do you think?

I was tempted to say that in the first round what was read was that there was a stable enough coalition, with sufficient administrative resources for the two major parties to help them to continue to act in the way they have been. But now everything is on the scales in my view. It is hard to guess whether one or the other will win. I would like to add something to what Mr Mitev said about Romania’s regional aspirations. It is this element that will perhaps be the most important in the foreign policy of any government that comes, regardless of who wins the elections. Divisions are beginning to emerge in Europe. Some have likened them somewhat exaggeratedly to the old empires, the Austro-Hungarian in this case. The convergence of Romania with the countries that were there, Austria, Hungary, Slovakia to some extent, is visible. We know that they had a common history and the convergence of positions between these countries evokes such associations. This creates the preconditions for a stronger regional policy.

From our Bulgarian point of view, this raises new issues that are quite serious for us as a country. If this trend continues, we see other things. Macron and the UK are beginning to have links. These are reminiscent of the isolation of England by Napoleon two centuries and something ago, which he sought to impose through empires on the continent. And in what a way it comes to the other extreme.There are processes that cannot be accurately portrayed at the moment, but one can see definite trends that are being ignored by the status quo everywhere in Europe. They are the main reason why this status quo is suffering defeats in one way or another in certain areas. One of these is elections.

I will ask you both for a short answer. Today I came across an analysis that launched the possibility of a situation similar to the one in 2000, when in a presidential election run-off between Ion Iliescu and the far-right politician Corneliu Vadim Tudor there was, in the words of the analysts, democratic forces uniting against Tudor. And in the end, Ion Iliescu became president.Is it possible that this could happen now, given today’s protests in Bucharest after these results?

I was ambassador after Tudor’s star had completely set. I can say that, in practice, he was a passing phenomenon. Perhaps part of the strategy of the oligarchy or of the external blue is to create controversial formations which are then quickly liquidated.We saw the same in Bulgaria – how many politicians disappeared from the horizon, creating various parties, rising to almost dizzying heights in the elections, and after just a few months they were gone. But for me the figure of Georgescu is not accidental, unlike the figure of Tudor.

Mr Mitev mentioned the name of Sergiu Celac. I know Sergiu Celac very well. He is a member of the Club of Rome, to which Georgescu also belongs. Celac is an extremely serious figure. He runs the most influential foreign policy research centre in Romania.I also know Mugur Isarescu, who, by the way, is the most respected governor in the world of the Central Bank of Europe. In all the 35 years from 1990 to today, he has not been head of the Romanian National Bank for just one year. And he was not, because they almost begged him on their knees and he became Prime Minister. These are extremely important personalities who influence the whole of life in Romania. That is why, for me, Georgescu is not an accidental figure, as I believe Vadim Tudor was. There are many question marks that we can hardly answer right now. They have emerged alongside this result and lead to limitations in predicting the outcome.

I would like to say that so far we have been talking about the older generations, with apologies and respect, for the way in which I express himself. The young people in Romania, as far as I can see and communicate, are mobilising in support of Lasconi, even though she is very weak in foreign policy. Lasconi has no basic knowledge of international relations. But she is considered sincere i.e. a different type of politician in the sense that she plays herself and not someone else. She is not fake. So the young are rallying behind her and maybe it is important what kind of advisors she will have.

As Mr Radomirski said, we are now at a stage where it is really difficult to make predictions about the forthcoming parliamentary elections and the second round of the presidential elections. I would like to thank Mr Valentin Radomirski, a diplomat and former Bulgarian ambassador to Romania, and my colleague from the Romanian section of Radio Bulgaria, Vladimir Mitev. They commented on the results of the first round of the presidential elections in Romania.

Photo: Valentin Radomirski (source: Facebook)

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