site.btaRomania’s AUR Leader Calls for Early Parliamentary Elections, Leveraging EU–US Divisions

George Simion, leader of Romania’s largest opposition party, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), called this week for early parliamentary elections and said his party was ready to take over governance during a transitional period.

Simion once again stated that Romania “has not been a democratic state since December 6, 2024, when the elections were annulled under a false pretext,” referring to the cancellation of the results of the first round of the presidential elections held on November 24, 2024, in which another populist and former AUR member, Calin Georgescu, finished first.

The persistent narrative of Simion’s party is that on December 6, 2024, when the Constitutional Court annulled the result of the first round, a “seizure of power” was carried out in Romania, and that Calin Georgescu is in fact the “elected president,” despite the fact that in the first round he received just over 2.1 million votes. By comparison, Romania’s current President Nicusor Dan was elected in the rerun of the presidential elections in May 2025 with more than 6.1 million votes, defeating George Simion in the second round (Simion received more than 5.3 million votes).

Fuel was added to George Simion’s narrative by an interim report published on February 3 by the Committee on the Judiciary of the U.S. House of Representatives, which examines how foreign laws, such as the EU’s Digital Services Act, affect technology companies in ways that allegedly censor freedom of speech, including in the US.

The House Judiciary Committee describes the Digital Services Act, which entered into force in 2023, as “the culmination of Europe’s decade-long effort to silence political opposition and suppress online narratives critical of the political elite.” The committee also recalls that the first fine under the European act was imposed in December 2025 on the social media platform X, owned by US billionaire Elon Musk, amounting to EUR 120 million.

The authors of the report claim that the European Commission (EC) exerts pressure on social networks to censor content ahead of elections, citing examples from Slovakia, the Netherlands, France, the Republic of Moldova, Romania and Ireland, as well as the European Parliament elections in June 2024.
“Mandatory [EC] rules for political censorship reached their peak in Romania in 2024,” the committee states, questioning the Romanian authorities’ decision to annul the elections on the grounds that Russia had secretly supported Calin Georgescu through a coordinated TikTok campaign.

“Internal company documents presented to the American committee appear to contradict this version of events,” the committee writes, noting that TikTok told the European Commission it had not found or received evidence supporting the Romanian authorities’ key claim of Russian interference.

In December 2024, the European Union launched formal proceedings against TikTok over suspicions that it had failed to curb interference in Romania’s presidential elections. Following the publication of the interim US report, EC Spokesperson Thomas Regnier said TikTok was “cooperating extensively” with the ongoing investigation, Reuters reported. Speaking to EUobserver, the Spokesperson categorically rejected the censorship accusations as “pure nonsense” and “completely unfounded.”

Two weeks before the publication of the interim report, AUR leader George Simion visited the US, where he presented Republican congressmen with a report prepared by AUR on the annulment of the elections.

During his visit, Simion also received an award for his work in the field of freedom of speech and democracy in Europe and announced that AUR would open an office in Washington, with party delegations travelling weekly to the US capital for meetings with American representatives.

Romanian news site Spotmedia noted that the award cited by the AUR leader was granted by Republicans for National Renewal, a non-governmental political organization operating in the nationalist-conservative sphere and close to the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. The organization is not part of the official structures of the Republican Party and does not represent the US Congress, the US administration or any federal government institution, Spotmedia explained.

The same group sparked controversy after organizing an event at the Trump Kennedy Center in Washington, where George Simion was filmed cutting a cake shaped like Greenland, iced with the US flag.

Simion’s meetings in Washington and AUR’s report on the annulled elections are unlikely to have influenced the interim report of the House committee, but they have had repercussions on Romania’s political scene.

“You know that our party, together with independent candidate Mr Calin Georgescu, was accused of using or benefiting from the support of thousands of TikTok accounts that coordinated their activity. This turned out to be a lie,” Simion commented on the report.

“Considering all the statements made in recent months by Romanian state officials and taking into account the preliminary report of the US Judiciary Committee, we call for a return to democracy, to the will of the people, and to early parliamentary elections,” Simion said, quoted by Agerpres.

He noted that during the US visit, the AUR delegation met with the team of Jim Jordan, chairman of the committee that drafted the report.

President Nicusor Dan, for his part, stressed that Romania is not the subject of the US report and that references to the country are strictly contextual, within a much broader debate on freedom of speech. “The references to the 2024 presidential elections presented in the document are strictly descriptive and only partially reflect the response of a single private company, the TikTok platform. They do not constitute and cannot replace a legal assessment. At the same time, the platform itself has acknowledged in several public reports that it identified multiple covert influence networks, prevented and removed tens of thousands of fake accounts and interactions, and banned hundreds of accounts,” the head of State wrote on Facebook.

Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan also recalled that the interim report is not specifically about Romania but about freedom of speech in general.

Regardless of the aims and topics addressed in the report, one thing remains beyond doubt, that the leader of AUR, which has topped opinion polls on Romanian electoral attitudes in recent months, is making significant efforts and exploiting every opportunity to highlight his contacts in the US.

Around the rerun of 2025 presidential elections, Romanian media revealed that AUR had signed a USD 1.5 million contract with a US lobbying company for political advertising in the US. Romania’s Permanent Electoral Authority launched an investigation, while the lobbying firm, BGD Legal and Consulting, said the contract had not entered into force, although it appeared on the official website of the US Department of Justice.

In February, Digi24 television reported that BGD Legal and Consulting had filed a lawsuit in the US against another lobbying firm, Obsidian Advisory LLC, for failure to meet contractual obligations to arrange meetings between AUR leaders and high-ranking administration officials, including President Donald Trump.

According to court information published by Digi24, USD 100,000 out of an agreed total of USD 500,000 was paid for an interview of an AUR member with Christopher Ruddy of the conservative media company Newsmax and for a photo with President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate over Easter, but the arrangement fell through. Other unfulfilled commitments cited in the lawsuit include a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, another senior State Department official, an article in Politico, and others.

BGD Legal and Consulting nevertheless succeeded in arranging an interview with George Simion on Newsmax, which the AUR leader published on his personal profile on May 15, 2025, Digi24 recalled.

It is evident that lobbying took place in the US on behalf of the AUR leader, but it did not benefit Simion personally, as he lost the second round of the presidential election to Nicusor Dan.

Simion’s actions regarding his US contacts last year were commented on by American businessman of Romanian origin Dragos Sprinceana, who is close to circles around President Trump, Romanian media reported. On February 6, Sprinceana wrote on X that for electoral purposes Simion had lobbied in the US for Romania’s exclusion from the visa waiver programme.

Two days before the first round of the rerun presidential elections in 2025, the US announced that Romania would be removed from the visa waiver programme and that visas for Romanian citizens would be maintained. George Simion thanked the Trump administration for the decision in an interview with American conservative journalist and MAGA supporter Jack Posobiec, who had travelled to Romania specifically to interview the candidate.

Sprinceana, who in early 2025 was proposed by former Social Democratic Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu as a special envoy for Romania–US relations, levelled harsh accusations against Simion, calling him a “petty traitor.”

“When I returned to Romania as a federal election consultant for the US and interviewed candidates together with Trey Trainor, chairman of the U.S. Federal Election Commission, and Aaron Gentry, I was astonished to learn during my meeting with Mr George Simion, who was drunk during the interview, that he had lobbied for Romania’s exclusion from the visa waiver programme to gain electoral capital against the coalition,” Spranceană wrote on X.

He addressed AUR members directly, warning that they were “led by a petty traitor to the country,” “a liar who continues to come to America and throw millions of dollars around, hoping to secure high-level meetings” to impress them.

Criticism of Simion also came from National Liberal Party MP Alexandru Muraru, who accused the AUR leader of spreading false information about Romania during a private visit to the US. Muraru called for sanctions against Simion and a parliamentary hearing over the AUR report claiming “a coup d’etat” had taken place in Romania. “This is a blatant lie aimed at misleading American partners about Romania’s democratic stability and the rule of law,” the MP said. He warned that such actions had affected the Romanian community in the US and could undermine Romania’s position in NATO and the EU.

At the same time, AUR has ranked first in opinion polls in recent months. A survey by CURS in January showed AUR would win 35% of the vote, while the Social Democratic Party, which won the 2024 parliamentary elections, would receive 23%. Regular parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2028.

Simion continues to make active use of social media to attract support, while denying TikTok’s influence on the developments at the end of 2024.

Former presidential candidate Calin Georgescu continues to enjoy positive sentiment among a significant share of Romanians. 36% of respondents in the CURS survey have a favourable opinion of him, while 60% do not trust him. 

Simion and President Nicusor Dan enjoy almost identical levels of trust - 32% and 31%, respectively, while distrust towards both exceeds 60%, according to data cited by Agerpres.