Romania is to send far-right politicians to the European Parliament for the first time, although the country’s centre-left ruling coalition managed to retain a strong majority at the weekend’s polls and insisted that voters “said no to extremism”
„We’ve achieved it. Finally, Romania will have a voice in the European Parliament that will help restore the dignity and pride of being Romanian,” Diana Sosoaca, leader of the right-wing S.O.S. Romania party, declared on Tuesday, shortly after the final results of the European parliamentary elections were announced in Romania.
“Brussels is already scared by the fact that we managed to become members of the European Parliament,” Sosoaca boasted.
Together with a party colleague and six other members of the populist and COVID-sceptic Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR), Sosoaca is among the first representatives of Romanian far-right to enter the European Parliament.
AUR, a party which was founded five years ago and which also opposes migration and military aid for Ukraine, came second in the European elections in Romania, with some 14 per cent of the votes.
S.O.S. Romania is a much younger party, which offers an ultra-nationalist discourse, and which has been also accused of supporting the Kremlin. It barely passed the minimum threshold of 5 per cent required to enter the European Parliament.
Experts suggest that both AUR and S.O.S. Romania will have a marginal voice in the European Parliament, and their representatives will likely remain non-aligned to any main parliamentary group.
Despite this, far-right parties and populist discourse have become increasingly visible in Romania in recent years, although their support is still not as prominent as is elsewhere on the continent, where the far-right made gains in various countries in the European polls.
The parties’ main source of support comes from disillusioned and anti-system voters, primarily among the Romanian diaspora and in smaller urban and rural areas.
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