Move comes after Marcel Ciolacu’s pro-EU coalition candidate fails to advance to the presidential run-off.
Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu has resigned, a day after a far-right opposition leader won the first round of the presidential election rerun and his own candidate crashed out of the race.
Ciolacu said on Monday that his centre-left Social Democratic Party (PSD) would withdraw from the pro-Western coalition – effectively ending it – while cabinet ministers will stay on in an interim capacity until a new majority emerges after the presidential run-off.
Hard-right eurosceptic George Simion decisively swept the ballot on Sunday, with some 41 percent of votes, and will face Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, an independent centrist, in a May 18 run-off. Coalition candidate Crin Antonescu came third.
“Rather than let the future president replace me, I decided to resign myself,” Ciolacu said.
Although Ciolacu’s leftist PSD won the most seats in a December 1 parliamentary election, Simion’s Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) and two other far-right groupings, one with overt pro-Russian sympathies, won more than a third of the seats to become a clear political force.
The Social Democrats had formed a coalition government with the centrist Liberals and ethnic Hungarian UDMR to help keep the European Union and NATO state on a pro-Western course. A governing majority that cordons off the far-right in the legislature cannot be formed without it.
“This coalition is no longer legitimate,” Ciolacu told reporters after a party meeting.
Before the meeting, Ciolacu stated that one of the conditions of forming the coalition was to field a common candidate to win the presidency.
Romania already has an interim president until the May 18 run-off. The country has the EU’s largest budget deficit and risks a ratings downgrade to below investment level unless it enforces a decisive fiscal correction.
Sunday’s vote came five months after a first attempt to hold the election was cancelled because of alleged Russian interference in favour of far-right frontrunner Calin Georgescu, since banned from standing again.
Simion has said he could appoint Georgescu prime minister should he win. The vote underscores simmering anger among vast parts of the Romanian electorate over high living costs and worries over security.
Some analysts think a Simion victory could isolate Romania, erode private investment and destabilise NATO’s eastern flank, where Bucharest plays a key role in providing logistical support to Ukraine as it fights a three-year-old Russian invasion, political observers say.
It would also expand a cohort of eurosceptic leaders in the EU that already includes the Hungarian and Slovak prime ministers at a time when Europe is struggling to formulate its response to United States President Donald Trump.
Simion said in a prerecorded speech aired after polls closed Sunday that, “I am here to restore constitutional order.”
“I want democracy, I want normalcy, and I have a single objective: to give back to the Romanian people what was taken from them and to place at the centre of decision-making the ordinary, honest, dignified people,” he said.
Simion said his hard-right nationalist AUR party is “perfectly aligned with the MAGA movement”, referring to Trump’s
“Make America Great Again” campaign and capitalising on a growing wave of populism in Europe after the US president’s political comeback.
AUR, which proclaims to stand for “family, nation, faith, and freedom”, rose to prominence in a 2020 parliamentary election and has doubled its support since then.