EU welcomes its first dictatorship

Democracy has just been overthrown in an EU nation for the first time ever – with the tacit backing of the European Union itself. Buckle up: if the preemptive coup in Romania is allowed to stand, this means that the EU has torn up its own rule book and welcomed a dictatorship into the community. 

Leading candidate barred from running

March 9, 2025, will be remembered as the day Romania’s electoral bureau (BEC) barred Calin Georgescu, a populist candidate with a run-away lead in the polls, from running in the rescheduled May presidential elections.  Georgescu’s support had sky-rocketed since the cancellation of the first round of the Presidential elections in November last year which he also won. The annulment was also a first: never before had an election been overturned in an EU/NATO country. Ever. Since then the EU leadership has looked the other way and is doing so now. Silence is complicity.

Government incinerates 9.4 million ballots in Romania

Georgescu won the first round of the 2024 Presidential elections – nobody disputes this – but the result was unacceptable to the famously corrupt governing parties and their EU and Biden administration backers who, without evidence, claimed a Russian Tik-Tok disinformation campaign had warped the minds of millions of voters. It would have been laughable except for the consequences. The votes of over 9.4 million Romanians were duly incinerated.  The EU refused to even review the case despite it clearly being in contravention of Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, and violated the EU’s Copenhagen Criteria which require member states adhere to strict democratic standards. 

Intimidation then banning of Georgescu

Fresh elections were scheduled for May. Georgescu was subjected to arrest and intimidation.  These antidemocratic measures –  imposed without a whisper of protest from EU officials – only strengthened his support amongst a population tired of political corruption.  As of this week Georgescu has poll ratings higher than Keir Starmer, higher than Emmanuel Macron, higher than Friedrich Merz.

In banning Georgescu from standing, the Constitutional Court’s decisions use vague claims that Georgescu violated electoral rules and threatened democratic values. 

“A direct blow to the heart of democracy.”

Georgescu immediately called the judicial coup d’etat “a direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide”. He also appealed for non-violent protest after chaotic scenes outside the government-controlled electoral bureau (BEC). 

"Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!" he told supporters. 

Regrettably, the response is largely divided along political lines rather than on matters of principle. Most leaders chose to avoid comment and the mainstream media is playing this like a minor story, despite it running roughshod over the EU’s Rule of Law Framework. 

Left-wing Yanis Varoufakis, the former Greek minister who knows from firsthand experience what a rightwing dictatorship looks like, had the sense and decency to ask: “Whatever happened to the notion that, faced with the enemies of democracy, we should fight their ideas but, equally, for their right to express them? The answer, unfortunately, is that it died an ignominious death on Sunday.”

From what I can work out, if Georgescu is “far-right”, he is no more so than more than half the politicians on either side of the Atlantic. He is certainly not my cup of tea politically but, having watched interviews with him, I could name a dozen European and American leaders who are even more reactionary and misguided than he is. The real crime committed by this agronomist and former UN Special Rapporteur on human rights may be that he is against both sending aid to Ukraine and to turning Romania into a forward missile base close to Russia. His election would also mean the ruling PNL and PSD elites would lose power. 

Was JD Vance right about Europe?

Did US Vice-President  JD Vance get advance warning about the pending judicial coup?  I re-read his words from last month’s Munich Security Conference which caused immense outrage and stone-cold stares at the time:

“The threat that I worry most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, not China, it’s not any other external actor. What I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values.”

He specifically criticized Romania’s election annulment, purportedly because of a Tik-tok campaign, saying:

“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.”

Euro elites abandoning democracy

On the other side are the Euro elites who would hold power regardless of popular will. 

Last month former European Commissioner Thierry Breton told French television that if the German AfD party won the elections in Germany they could also be annulled by the European Union, ‘as was done in Romania’.  

This slide in democratic values has been brewing for years. One example, among many: back in 2015 the major UK papers ran headlines such as this one: “British Army 'could stage mutiny under Corbyn', says senior serving general. Generals would not 'allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of the UK'. Corbyn’s crime was he was opposed to the Trident nuclear submarine programme, was iffy on NATO and, well, just a bit too interested in ordinary people, what what. A media smear campaign and a coup by the rightwing of the Labour Party sorted the Corbyn problem out nicely.

This is a metastasizing cancer inside the Western system. If we are going to ban people and parties for repellent views and behaviour I would start with the British Labour Party, the governing coalition in Germany and all the others who have funded the genocide against the Palestinian people.   

The mainstream media is normalising a coup

Don’t be fooled by the low level of attention the mainstream media has given this story: a great crime has been committed against the people of Europe. I certainly don’t share Georgescu’s politics but I would defend to the death people’s right to vote in free and fair elections. The way to defeat the far right is through sound argument and powerful campaigning, not by fascistic takeovers that trash popular belief in the ballot box. 

Protesters chanted in Bucharest this week: “Ultima soluție este o altă revoluție”. “The last resort is another revolution”.  People should sit up and pay attention: that sentiment echoes the 1989 overthrow of the dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu; it is a call of desperation and defiance, a reminder of that era and the sacrifice Romanians made to drive the dictator from power – and to win the right to free and fair elections.  

Europe needs to wake from the deep, deep sleep it is in, reject political repression, and stand up for pluralism, free speech and democracy. 

Eugene Doyle

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz.

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