By electing Nicușor Dan, Romania has scored an image-boost coup in Brussels and, at the same time, created expectations that are very difficult to satisfy. The potential benefits, but also the responsibility that befalls our country, are great.
The early signs are there: Nicușor Dan was congratulated on Sunday night by the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, but also by Emmanuel Macron, the most influential European leader at the moment, in a videolink exchange he had with the French president before the election.
The “hard” reason: the last pro-Western bastion in South-Eastern Europe
There are two reasons why Brussels is happy about the outcome of the Romanian election. If we look at the map of Central and Eastern Europe from north to south from a Western point of view, we can notice: three Baltic States aligned with the EU’s pro-Western objectives Union, a pro-European Poland, but with an illiberal regime until recently, Romania (a complete unknown prior to May 19) and Bulgaria, another overtly pro-European country, but with major problems related to corruption and efficiency, adding to which is Russian influence. Other than that, there are only the Balkans and other continents.
If we look a little further westwards, we see Czechia and Slovakia, two countries that are also affected by illiberalism to varying degrees, as well as Austria controlled by the FPÖ, a party affiliated to the most toxic major group in the European Parliament, Patriots.eu, as well as Hungary, a state that has become a case study in Euroscepticism, the destruction of a functional democracy, and Russophilia. With a sovereignist Romania, it would be as if the entire EU southwest had surrendered to global extremism and the Russian ideological drive. On the contrary, a pro-European Romania means a Western bastion or an oasis of liberal-democratic values in a sea of geopolitical uncertainty, just as Iorga once called us a “Latin island in a Slavic sea”.
The soft reason: a happy-ending (for now) political saga
All of the above is part of the “hard” reality, even if Bucharest may not see it as such.
A second reason for Brussels’ openness towards Romania is of a rather “softer” nature. The same “narrative” that emotionally destabilized pro-European Romania (from Călin Georgescu’s sudden rise to prominence in the presidential election of 2014 and the subsequent annulment of that election, the suspense of the parliamentary election, to the agony of the first round of the 2025 presidential election on May 4 and the exhilaration of the second round on May 18) has put on edge the entire European Union, highly aware of the political makeup of the aforementioned states. Tension was also incremented by the fact that hybrid warfare and TikTok were invoked at a level never seen before, and the nerve-racking ending urges Brussels to display the same generosity it was shown by Romanian voters.
Nicușor Dan's honeymoon with Brussels: sweet but expensive
Freshly elected presidents traditionally benefit from a “honeymoon” period (100 days, in the USA) with the electorate and the media in their own country, that is, a period of popularity, when both display their benevolence towards the president-elect. Nicușor Dan will certainly have such a honeymoon with Europe.
In institutional terms, this translates into a period of responsiveness towards Romania's needs, from the budget deficit (for which a milder annual reduction could be accepted) to European funding – the bone of contention with the European Commission referring to the redirection of European funding from the Recovery and Resilience plan to projects in which only local investments have been made so far.
In other words, Romania will simply benefit from trust following the resounding democratic cliffhanger of May 18. Trust, however, is known to come not just with benefits, but also with responsibilities. As already noted, Europe is undergoing a fast-paced process of geopolitical reconfiguration at present, primarily due to the Russian threat, but also as a result of superficially and poorly managed dossiers, such as migration. Romania will have to actively get involved in thorny situations related to EU’s military budget or take part in the peace process in Ukraine, which right now is nothing more than a pipe dream.
A president whose fate will be at stake from his first weeks in office
Nicușor Dan's problem is that he reached the second round of the presidential election with the support of an “anti-establishment” electorate, but his victory in the runoff relied on the votes from within the “establishment” itself - the overwhelming majority of Liberal Party (PNL) voters and to a large extent even voters of the Social-Democratic Party (PSD), a fact confirmed by sociological research. There is hardly any point in talking about the strong support of the Democratic Union of Ethnic Hungarians (UDMR), the party with the most consistent representation in successive cabinets after 1989. In political terms, this translates into huge pressure regarding the structure of the new government. Ultimately, the new president has no way of inventing new parties with a parliamentary majority, so the presumption that the new pro-European ruling coalition will very much resemble the old one (which was also pro-European) is quite plausible. In the spur-of-the-moment interviews he gave shortly after his victory was announced, Dan emphasized political principles and objectives as the object of negotiation, to the detriment of specific names and parties – a level-headed approach. Beyond the country ratings and voters’ expectations, Romania's categorical pro-European course is also important for Brussels. Europe needs us just as much as we need Europe.
In other words, the fate of the new president will be at stake from the very first weeks of his mandate: if the “new” pro-European alliance is no more genuinely and decidedly pro-European than the previous “establishment” made up of more or less of the same parties, Romania will remain in a geopolitical limbo, despite the significant turnout in the presidential election. This one-man job appears to be impossible, but the victory of May 19 seemed just as impossible. What Nicușor Dan can achieve and how is impossible to predict.
