Romania must step up to its role of pro-Western leader in the region

De
Alison Mutler
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Nicusor Dan saluta multimea dupa ce s-au anuntat rezultatele finale ale alegerilor prezidentiale, in Bucuresti, 19 mai 2025. Inquam Photos / Codrin Unici
With the victory of MAGA-aligned Karol Nawrocki in Poland’s presidential election this weekend, Romania takes on a new role as the only country in the region with a clear pro-Western direction.
A lot is riding on Romania to play this role well and defend democracy on the EU’s and NATO’s eastern flank with a destablizing war on its borders.
Once installed, Mr. Nawrocki, a historian and amateur boxer, will join the ranks of Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Slovakia’s Robert Fico as nationalists and disruptors in the European Union who are opposed to giving military aid and support to Ukraine, which is now more than three years into the Russian invasion.
Pro-EU and NATO supporters in Romania and beyond had been hoping that Warsaw Mayor Rafal Rafał Trzaskowski would defeat the nationalist Nawrocki and the two biggest countries in the region would form a broad pro-Western alliance.
So his defeat has upped the pressure on Romania’s new President Nicusor Dan, who two weeks ago decisively defeated another MAGA-aligned nationalist frontrunner in the presidential runoff.
Mr. Dan has a strong pro-America, pro-Europe and pro-NATO stance and has been delivered a clear mandate by the Romanian people. His success was a delight and a relief to those who did not want to see the country slide into isolationism.
The 55-year-old former Bucharest mayor who has since been sworn in as president is in the process of forming a reform-minded government, tasked with cutting the budget deficit and reducing red tape and corruption. A pro-European leader in Poland would have been reassuring for the new Romanian president. But now he’s on his own.
Supporters of liberal democracy in Romania, Europe and the United States are counting on Romania to get it right and be the region’s leader.
Romania will be the main transit point for aid to Ukraine and needs logistic and political support from its (reliable) partners in the EU and NATO to fulfill that role. It’s a challenge, but also a huge opportunity for Bucharest to play a key role in Europe’s history.
Mr. Dan’s job is now to form a stable government with clear strategic goals which has a parliamentary majority. The democratic world is counting on Romania.
BACKGROUND
Romania has surprised many over the last 35 years. It began from the hardest place possible, a country that was more traumatized and less economically, democratically and socially developed than Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.
But since the election of Emil Constantinescu to the presidency in 1996, it has “stayed the course” to quote what former US President Bill Clinton told crowds during a visit to Bucharest in 1997.
Romania has faced challenges, political and social, it has dodged many bullets, but has  never deviated from its path.
It’s the most resilient, most dogged of nations, perhaps not the first country you would think of as “a bastion of reliability” in the region.

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