Few things are more dangerous than unelected bureaucrats who claim moral superiority while trampling on democratic principles. That is precisely what is happening in Romania where Calin Georgescu, a nationalist and staunch critic of Brussels, has been barred from running in May’s presidential election. The decision by the country’s central election authority and backed by European Union elites has exposed European liberalism which celebrates democracy only when the results are convenient.
At the heart of this crisis is the annulment of Romania’s December 6 election, a move so brazenly anti-democratic that it would have been condemned had it taken place in Hungary or Poland. Georgescu, a pro-sovereignty candidate, had been leading the race when, just two days before the final round, Romania’s highest court scrapped the entire process. The official reason? Allegations of Russian interference - allegations that remain unproven and which Moscow has denied.
This decision alone was troubling. But the outright ban on Georgescu’s candidacy reveals the real agenda at play. The election authority argues that “it is inadmissible” for a previously disqualified candidate to run again. But who made this rule? Romania’s Constitution does not explicitly prevent disqualified candidates from standing in re-run elections. The ban reeks of political calculation rather than legal necessity.
The response from Romania’s electorate has been telling. Protests erupted outside the election bureau as furious supporters of Georgescu, many of them ordinary Romanians disillusioned with Brussels, clashed with security forces. The anger is not simply about a single election but about the broader feeling that their country is being treated as a vassal state of the European Union, its sovereignty undermined by foreign elites who have no stake in the daily struggles of Romanian citizens.
The EU’s condescending attitude towards Romania has been evident for years. Since its accession to the bloc in 2007, Romania has been treated as an inferior member state, constantly scolded for its governance while Brussels extracts cheap labour and resources. Romanians have grown weary of lectures from Germany and France about the rule of law when those same countries ignore their own democratic failings.
The reason Georgescu gained such a strong following in the first place is that Romanians are rejecting the EU’s empty promises. Two decades of membership were supposed to bring prosperity, yet wages remain low, young people are fleeing to Western Europe for work, and local industries have been hollowed out by foreign corporations. Romania now finds itself reduced to a periphery state in the European economic hierarchy, useful only as a cheap manufacturing hub and buffer against Russia.
The growing Euroscepticism in Romania is part of a broader trend across Eastern Europe. From Hungary’s Viktor Orbán to Slovakia’s Robert Fico, nationalist leaders are winning because they speak for voters who feel abandoned by the European project. Brussels brands them as ‘populists’ and ‘authoritarians,’ but the truth is simpler: they are responding to the democratic will of their people.
The same European elites who lecture Eastern Europeans about democracy had no issue overturning Brexit votes in the UK Parliament, ignoring Dutch and French referendums on the EU Constitution, or interfering in Italy’s elections when Giorgia Meloni’s government came to power.
Georgescu’s exclusion from Romania’s presidential race is yet another example of this double standard. European diplomats, including those from Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Spain, have rushed to defend Romania’s courts, claiming that the ban is necessary to safeguard democracy. But what democracy are they referring to? A democracy where ‘Russian interference’ is selectively invoked to silence critics of the EU while pro-Brussels candidates are given a free pass?
For all its talk of democratic values, the European Union has shown once again that it prefers control over consent. If democracy is to mean anything, it must include the right of people to make their own choices - however inconvenient they may be to the ruling elites in Brussels.
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