Nationalist George Simion was on his way to becoming the next president of Romania, a strategic NATO hub and Eurocrat vassal state in Eastern Europe. But then his Establishment candidate made what many Romanians consider an unbelievable comeback.
Challenging Dan’s Victory
On Tuesday, citing foreign election interference, Simion announced he was challenging Nicușor Dan’s victory:
We now have irrefutable evidence of meddling by France, Moldova, and other actors, in an orchestrated effort to manipulate institutions, direct media narratives, and ultimately impose a result that does not reflect the sovereign will of the Romanian people.
Simion alleges that €100 million was spent in Moldova on votes. He also claims that ballots with names of dead people were cast in Sunday’s final election round. Among the evidence he cited was a statement from Pavel Durov, the owner of the social media platform Telegram. Durov said that France had asked his platform to silence Romanian conservatives before the election. Durov has a long history of receiving pressure from governments, including his native Russian one, to censor unapproved speech.
Simion isn’t holding his breath while waiting for Romania’s Constitutional Court to annul the election results. This is, after all, the same court that approved banning nationalist candidate Călin Georgescu from running for president back in March.
Despite Tuesday’s announcement, Simion’s message hasn’t been consistent. Early on election day, while the count was coming in, he said an attempt “to steal the victory of the Romanian people” was underway and that there were “many deceased people” on electoral lists. But during a concession message later that same day, he admitted he lost by one million votes and said he “cannot accuse significant tampering with the ballots.” However, by Tuesday, he had changed his mind again. One of the reasons, he said, was because his supporters, who “do not want a president like this puppet,” urged him to do so.
A Surprising Outcome
Dan garnered 54 percent of the votes over Simion’s 46 percent. The Council on Foreign Relations admitted this was “a surprise result.”
Surprising indeed, especially since Dan lost to Simion by double the number of votes just a few weeks before, May 4, in the first round. Surprising also because every major poll going into the final round had Simion winning by no fewer than 10 points. And more reason for skepticism is the fact that Georgescu, the popular nationalist who was banned months ago, also overwhelmingly won the first round of elections in November.
The explanation for Dan’s victory hinges on voter turnout. “Voter participation surged since the first round of the election, in which the far-right candidate ranked first,” the CFR explains. The journal adds that this election saw the highest level of votes in 25 years.
Nicușor Dan
Dan is the mayor of Romania’s capital city, Bucharest. He is a mathematician with a Ph.D. from Université Paris XIII in France and a professor. And, he happens to hold the right views on Western Establishment-approved narratives. He has made several statements that under his leadership, there will be no daylight between Romania, NATO, and the European Union.
Dan ran on an anti-corruption and reformist platform, vowing to bring honesty and decency to a nation swimming in corruption. Romania is a former Soviet-era vassal state. While the communists are no longer officially in charge, however, corruption on every level remains a fact of life. According to corporate ethics watchdog GAN Integrity:
Foreign investors complain of complicated procedures, arbitrary application of rules and requests for bribes when resolving administrative tasks related to business operations. The Romanian Criminal Code and other supporting laws criminalize active and passive bribery, including bribery of foreign officials. A company can be held criminally liable for corruption offenses committed by individuals acting on its behalf. The government, however, does not enforce anti-corruption laws effectively and impunity is widespread.
Dan’s victory was met with congratulations from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, French President Emmanuel Macron, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Antonio Costa, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, and others.
U.S. Reaction
The United States has yet to congratulate Dan. However, the U.S. embassy in Bucharest has issued a statement saying they look forward to working with the new government.
And it’s not as if U.S. leaders aren’t aware of what’s happening in Romania. During his finger-wagging speech at the 61st Munich Security Conference on February 14, 2025, Vice President J.D. Vance brought up the annulment of Georgescu’s victory as evidence, among many other examples, of Europe’s descent into tyranny. He said:
This December, Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its Continental neighbors. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections…. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with.
Anti-NATO Georgescu
Georgescu, unlike Dan, held skeptical views on the West’s support for the Russia-Ukraine war, the EU, NATO, and the UN. He spoke frequently of his desire for peace, and accused the UN and NATO of working to instigate war, not foster peace.
Perhaps what scared the globalists most about Georgescu were his views on NATO. He pointed out that while NATO was created as a defensive alliance against an aggressive Soviet Union, it has morphed into an offensive entity. As it happens, a Romanian NATO base is being expanded to become the largest in Europe. NATO is upgrading its base in Mihail Kogalniceanu in Constanta, which is in southeast Romania on the Black Sea coast. Georgescu suspects the reason for bulking up this base is to eventually attack Russia, which is only 600 miles away.
After Georgescu was banned, the election bureau allowed Simion to take his place in the running. Like Georgescu, he opposed military aid to Ukraine. And Simion has a rather antagonistic relationship with his northern neighbor, which has banned him from entering. He had made numerous statements castigating EU leaders as “unelected bureaucrats” who sought to perpetuate control over Romania as part of efforts to implement the globalist agenda. He also opposed the idea of a European army, the exact opposite position of president-elect Dan. But when it comes to NATO, he disagrees with Georgescu. He told The Telegraph that he favors NATO bases as a deterrent to what he calls a belligerent Russia.
Simion is the leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a party that emerged during the Covid era. AUR represented the millions of Romanians who compared the totalitarian Covid dictates and vaccine pressure to the actions of their previous Soviet oppressors. He has championed traditional family values and reliance on God. He said that if he became president, he would bring Georgescu into his administration.
