Liviu Dragnea, leader of the victorious Social Democrat Party. Wikimedia/Partidul Social Democrat. Some rights reserved.Romanian citizens voted in parliamentary elections yesterday. The results are not what you would expect in eastern Europe these days: with 46% of the seats in both chambers of Parliament, the Social Democrats (PSD) left everyone else in the dust; the far right party is puny, largely unknown and failed to enter the Parliament.
That this country was not engulfed by the region’s right-wing populist wave may seem puzzling. This is a multiethnic country whose interwar nationalism and fascism were strong. Even its communism had a strong nationalist flavour and its early post-communist politics saw the rise of the strongest ultranationalist parties in the region.
Romania is also one of Europe’s poorest countries, its banking sector and export industry are almost entirely foreign owned, and its economic hardship sent close to a third of the labour force into emigration. Too many of its politicians, civil servants and business elite are corrupt, its population has some of the most conservative and authoritarian social values in Europe, and local millionaires have funded TV stations and parties peddling the standard right-wing populist fare. To top it off, Hungary’s Victor Orbán has unleashed new tension in bilateral relations.
