Romania’s rising far-right AUR party wants to use next year’s EU elections to reform EU institutions and boost a European right-wing coalition led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s political model, party President George Simion told EURACTIV in an exclusive interview.
The Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) made its political debut by capturing 9% of the vote in the 2020 parliamentary elections. Three years on, polls suggest they will more than double their support to 20%, potentially ending up in second place.
Romania holds both parliamentary and presidential elections next year, and Simion made it no secret that he wants to be in the next government, especially after a recent scandal with ‘horror asylums’ for the elderly hurt the Socialist-led government.
“We want to govern Romania from the end of 2024. We will do it either by winning the majority or by forming a coalition if the future president decides that we will be in a coalition government,” he told EURACTIV in Bucharest.
Simion’s self-confidence belies a widespread perception in Romania that AUR is an extremist party and bad news for the country.
Ion M. Ioniță, a senior editor and journalist at Adevarul Newspaper, told EURACTIV that the dichotomy is easily explained.
“The Romanian society and the media are very polarised now. The guys on the European camp are very critical of him [Simion}. And on the other side, the nationalists and the nationalistic press in Romania are probably very favourable to him.”
For the mainstream, he said, “this political expression of Romanian nationalism, which is AUR, is a threat to democracy, for European values, for Romania’s European membership, because AUR is very critical about the European Union and Western values and a lot of people have concerns in this field”.
AUR says it defends traditional family values and opposes LGBTQ+ marriage and ‘gender ideology´.
Its four pillars are faith, liberty, family, and nation. The party also supports the controversial idea of the Romania-Moldova reunification, all under a Christian-nationalist ideology.
The party could claim between 8 and 11 MEPs after the EU elections in June 2024. Having presented their 44 candidates at a campaign launch on 21 July, AUR wants to see a transformation of the EU institutions.
“Giorgia Meloni is a political model for us,” Simion said, adding that Meloni follows the interest of the Italian people “like we want to follow the interest of the Romanian people”.
Simion described AUR as a ‘Eurorealist’ party which wants to be part of a reformed EU that gives sovereignty back to European nations, aligning with the European Conservative and Reformist group in the European Parliament.
“We would be the last country that exits the European Union,” Simion said, adding that leaving would be “pure suicide”.
Parliament’s shift to the right
He said he expects the new European Parliament to shift more to the right next year.
“This will happen, but this won’t destroy Europe, maybe it will make it healthier from the economic point of view because things are going in a bad direction.”
Simion criticised Brussels for its “bureaucracy”, comparing how it imposes legislation on member states to when Romania was under Soviet rule and “Moscow dictated.”
The European Commission, he said, should have less power, while the Parliament, the only directly elected institution, should have the right to initiate legislation.
“Our take on the future of Europe is a better Europe because we don’t think unelected bureaucrats in Brussels have the same agenda as the people do,” he said, stressing the growing disconnect between the priorities of Brussels and those of Romania, one of the three poorest countries in the bloc.
“I hear from the Commission about gender identity, climate change, about the green deal. But in Romania, we don’t have hospitals, roads, an education system that works – these are our priorities.”
Simion criticised the Commission’s interference in national politics, giving as an example Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s comments ahead of the Italian elections in February 2023.
He agreed, though, that AUR would follow the example of Meloni’s recent rapprochement with the Commission, von der Leyen, and other European political parties after coming to power.
“We will want a good relationship with the Commission and with all other institutions in Brussels, and the reality now in 2023 is that Ursula von der Leyen and Giorgia Meloni are best friends,” said Simion.
“We don’t want to be an enemy of anyone sovereigntist or Green or Left and so on because they represent part of the people’s voice, and it’s hard not to have cooperation in mind,” he said.
However, AUR put a hard red line against Viktor Orban’s Fidesz, qualifying the Hungarian prime minister as having “dictatorship tendencies”.
“Orban is more attached to Putin’s policy of changing borders. We think this is anachronistic; we don’t want to change borders, we want to cooperate and take down borders,” Simion said.
But Romanian MEP Daniel Buda (EPP) was not convinced and told EURACTIV: “An AUR government for Romania and the EU would mean a second Orbán who would always question EU values, or worse, a David Cameron, the artisan of the Brexit referendum. Romania could easily end up in the same situation.”
He added that the AUR is “anti-system” and holds anti-vaccine beliefs and blames the EU for the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation, and rising energy prices.
The right ‘patriot’ friends
AUR has established ties with other far-right and right-wing formations from across Europe.
During the official presentation of AUR candidates for the EU Parliament on 21 July, the party invited a wide range of MEPs from various “friendly” political parties, including Italy’s Fratelli d’Italia (ECR) and Lega (ID), the Sweden Democrats (ECR), Conservative People’s Party of Estonia (ID), and Polands’ PiS (ECR).
“I wait for you in Brussels, we need you,” Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia MEP Carlo Fidanza told the rally, urging the patriots to have a common stand against the left.
Similarly, Charlie Weimers from the Sweden Democrats said, “the irony is that those in Brussels, they call themselves pro-European, but no, they are pro-EU, we are pro-European”.
Commenting on AUR’s friends in Europe, Romanian MEP Dragos Pislaru (Renew), said the party is part of an anti-European wave that started rooted in illiberalism but has advanced to extremist speech and ideology.
“AUR is not alone in Europe, but has support from all these political forces that act similar in the EU,” adding that this includes preying on people’s fears through the use of “lies and illusions.”
“They are part of this anti-European wave..the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, high energy prices – all of these leave marks on citizens that are exploited by populist practices,” Pislaru said.
*Additional reporting by Tobias Gerhard Schminke
[Edited by Benjamin Fox/Zoran Radosavljevic]