The independent pro-EU mayor of Bucharest Nicusor Dan won the May 18 presidential election runoff in Romania, taking 54% of the votes in a pivotal confrontation with hard-right, isolationist candidate George Simion. 

The turnout in the second ballot of the election in Romania reached nearly 65%, highlighting the importance of the ballot and providing legitimacy to the winner.

Dan ran in the second round as an independent backed by several parties, primarily the reformist Union Save Romania (USR), the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians in Romania (UDMR) and the National Liberal Party (PNL). 

The leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), Simion, admitted his defeat after the final unofficial results were announced during the night of May 18-19. Earlier, he claimed frauds against him on election day, and declared his win at 21:00 despite the exit polls announcing the opposite.

Simion won the first round of the presidential elections on May 4 with 41% of the votes, nearly twice Dan’s 21% score.

The strong turnout in large university centres, in the regions inhabited by Romania's Hungarian minority and in neighbouring Moldova proved instrumental in helping Dan compensate for the strong position held by Simion in less affluent segments of the population particularly those in the diaspora (where Simion won 56% of the votes) but also in some eastern and southern regions of the country. 

Romania repeated the presidential elections after cancelling the vote last December citing irregularities in the electoral campaign and implying Russia’s interference in favour of fascist candidate Calin Georgescu, who unexpectedly won the first round after his popularity was boosted by an intense TikTok campaign. 

Georgescu was banned from running in the rerun because of his extremist positions that breached constitutional provisions, and backed Simion. 

Despite the eight percentage point spread between the two candidates, the divide within Romanian society remains wide and far-right parties in parliament hold a significant 30% share of the seats. 

As president, Dan will now have to negotiate the formation of a ruling majority to tackle Romania’s acute fiscal and budgetary challenges. Romania currently has a caretaker cabinet headed by interim PNL president Catalin Predoiu, after the Social Democrat prime minister Marcel Ciolacu resigned two weeks ago. 

Dan announced during his campaign that he would seek to form a broad pro-EU ruling coalition with the participation of the PSD, the largest party in the current parliament. However, the PSD did not commit to such a plan, as the party took an ambiguous stance ahead of the presidential election runoff. It was believed to be keeping the door open to collaboration with the far-right parties in case of Simion winning the presidential election. 

Joining a pro-EU ruling coalition would involve a significant reshuffle within the PSD, in order to keep the party politically viable and eventually turn it into a genuine social democratic party that would help prevent the further ascent of populist politicians.

Following the election, Romania is in a better position to address its pressing economic challenges. However, the lack of reforms by the main political parties, which have lost voters’ confidence, is still generating political instability.

Investors and the European Commission are expecting a fiscal corrective package before continuing to finance the country. Romania risks missing the 7%-of-GDP public deficit target this year after the gap reached 2.9% of GDP gap in January-April. The rating agencies are on the verge of pushing the sovereign debt into junk, and the European Commission is considering suspending the disbursements of funds under the Resilience Facility and cohesion budget unless a realistic fiscal consolidation strategy is inked and implemented quickly.