When Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban presented in June 2024 his project Make Europe Great Again (MEGA), very few experts considered it more than a slogan, a simple nod to the ultraconservative MAGA movement that has made Donald Trump president of the US for the second time.
However, the Hungarian leader had been explicit in defining his goal in an interview two years earlier with a local media outlet. "We have to go further, take positions, gather allies, and correct the European Union. Feeling angry is not enough; we must take over Brussels," he declared.
For the leader of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), George Simion, the favorite to win in the first round of the presidential elections in the European country taking place this Sunday, his hypothetical victory is part of a general project aimed at "ensuring that in the coming years, MEGA will have a majority of European governments through elections and will manage to stop the EU's policies."
According to local polls, Simion - who met with a small group of foreign journalists on Tuesday - has become the heir to the phenomenon led by Calin Georgescu, the engineer and far-right leader who won the elections last November despite all expert predictions but was ultimately disqualified by the Constitutional Court, which also annulled the vote considering there had been "massive manipulation" of the campaign by social media platforms like TikTok.
However, 39-year-old Simion refuses to have his ideology labeled as "far-right." "Please, do not use the far-right label. It is not accurate. In fact, it is insulting," one of his advisors stated in a WhatsApp message before the meeting.
"You can call me a nationalist, populist, conservative, or hard-right, but we are not punks with boots going around killing people. I want to make it clear that my advisors told me not to speak with you because EL MUNDO is a leftist newspaper, but I want to be honest," Simion stated during lunch.
It is not significant to Simion that his values align with those of many other parties like Vox, which belong to the far-right spectrum. "I am conservative, an ally of Trump, and I believe that marriages should be between a man and a woman. I will not allow gay marriages in Romania. That does not mean we will put LGBT people in jail. Ten or fifteen years ago, I thought that sex change was crazy, that it would never happen, but it did. The European Commission cannot impose changes on our culture," he expressed in the conversation.
It is also not particularly meaningful to Simion that he repeatedly states that if elected president, he will try to appoint the aforementioned Calin Georgescu as prime minister. "He is a very important element in our campaign, and I only ran for elections after receiving his phone call on the day the elections were annulled," he stated. He insists that it was Georgescu himself who urged him to run for the elections.
Question.- Are you aware that Georgescu said that dictator Ion Antonescu and the founder of the fascist Iron Guard movement, Corneliu Zelea Codreanu, were "heroes" and "martyrs" despite collaborating with Hitler and being accused of causing the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews during those years?
Answer.- You should ask Georgescu about history. It is the duty of historians to judge people. The same is said now about Franco and the Valley of the Fallen. That is history. I am more focused on the future.
Q.- An expert from the Elie Wiesel Institute for the Study of the Holocaust told me that the revival of the cult of Ion Antonescu and especially of the "legionnaires" (as they were called) of Codreanu constitutes "a danger to democracy" and that the state is not doing anything about it. What is your opinion?
A.- We are allies of Israel and Likud.
Q.- I am asking about Antonescu and the Iron Guard.
A.- According to Romanian law, Ion Antonescu is a war criminal.
Simion does not forget that he graduated with a master's degree in History. Throughout his early political activism, he advocated for Romanian irredentism, which calls for the recovery of territories like Bessarabia - now part of Ukraine - or Moldova, which were separated from the country after World War II, a sentiment he shares with Hungarian Viktor Orban, who locally maintains his antagonism towards the Treaty of Trianon of 1920, which, after World War I and Budapest's defeat in that conflict, forced the European country to cede two-thirds of its territory.
Now, the Romanian is more cautious. He says that "changing borders would open Pandora's box" and even responds to accusations of flirting with Vladimir Putin and Russia by stating that if Moscow does not agree to peace with Kiev, he would be in favor of "increasing" sanctions against that country. "I would be willing to confiscate Lukoil's assets," he said, referring to a Russian company that owns hundreds of gas stations and a refinery in Romania.
When a journalist asks if he is moderating his discourse during the campaign, Simion honestly replies, "Yes, I am a politician."
The AUR leader does not hide his attempt to gain effective support from the entire ideological nebula revolving around Donald Trump. Simion was one of the far-right leaders who attended the inauguration of the new US president's term last January and made another visit to the country just a few weeks ago to boost his candidacy through interviews with media outlets sympathetic to the president, including one with former chief ideologue of the billionaire, Steve Bannon.
During the conversation with Bannon, Simion described the events following the November election as a "coup d'état" and added that what he called the "deep state" is willing to "do anything, they are willing to physically eliminate us (assassinate him)" to prevent his victory in the elections.
The importance given to the European nation by the closest circle to the US president was evident when his vice president, J. D. Vance, criticized the decision to invalidate the November elections. This opinion caused a significant stir locally, as did even more explicit remarks from Trump's advisor, Elon Musk, who stated that "Europe is now a dictatorship, and Romania is under tyranny," or from his own son, Donald Trump Jr., who indicated that it was another "attempt by the Marxists and (George) Soros to manipulate the results and deny the popular will."
This view is shared by Simion. "There is no democracy in Romania. We had free elections that were annulled without any evidence. The people managing the institutions participated in a coup d'état. The will of the people is what sets us apart from autocratic regimes," he commented.
The US president's son himself appeared in Bucharest on Monday to speak at a business event that not everyone simply interpreted as such. According to the Romanian edition of Newsweek, Trump's son's trip was organized by a local businessman wanted by the law and close to the far-right sectors that supported Calin Georgescu.
"They said it was a business visit, but it has been a clear message of support for the far right," estimated analyst Cristian Pirvulescu in a phone conversation.
Madalina Voinea, one of the main analysts at Expert Forum, was one of the people who noticed the irregular use of TikTok during the last campaign. The reports issued by the Romanian think tank were decisive for the Constitutional Court to cancel the November vote.
"TikTok is the second most used platform in Romania after Facebook, with nine million followers (total population is 19 million). Suddenly, a month before the elections, we noticed a surge in accounts promoting a nostalgic view of communism, fascism, and anti-system. TikTok became a wild west of disinformation," Voinea explained to this newspaper.
Voinea's research team discovered that these same accounts began to link with those supporting Calin Georgescu, which in a matter of days went from being seen by a few million people to 200 million. The expert ensures that most of the accounts that promoted Georgescu's candidacy did not belong to individuals with a known identity and had previously focused on spreading "entertainment or junk content." "In November, they transformed into pages supporting Georgescu with a coordinated strategy, the same videos, the same messages," she added.
In April, TikTok admitted to detecting 27,000 fake accounts supporting Georgescu, which in turn were followed by another 70,000. The social platform acknowledged it was "an attempt to manipulate the discourse of the elections in Romania" using "IP addresses located in Turkey" but using email services from Russia.
However, Voinea insists that the irregularities detected on social media alone do not explain Georgescu's surprising victory or why Simion remains the favorite in popular consultations.
"The people's frustration is legitimate. We are an extremely unequal society suffering from the inefficiency of a clientelist State, a kleptocracy. The (annulled) elections were a legitimate expression of the Romanians' desperation despite the interferences," she concludes.