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| Anatol Țăranu | |
Following a decision adopted by the leaders of the PSD - PNL ruling alliance on July 4, the calendar of this year’s presidential and parliamentary elections in Romania was approved. The first round of the presidential election will take place on November 24, while the runoff vote, if necessary, on December 8. The parliamentary elections will be held on December 1.
Romania’s electoral legislation provides...
In accordance with the current electoral legislation of Romania, the President of the country is elected by direct vote, through a two-round system. If no candidate obtains an absolute majority of votes in the first round, a runoff vote involving the first two ranked candidates is held. The term in office of the President is five years and this can be renewed only once.
The Romanian Parliament is a bicameral one and consists of the Chamber of Deputies with 330 deputies and the Senate with 136 senators. The parliamentary elections are held according to a party-list proportional representation system. Parties must pass an electoral threshold of 5% of the valid votes cast at national level to enter Parliament. Seats are also allocated to national minorities that obtain at least 0.1% of the poll.
Moldovans voted in record numbers in European Parliament elections
In the Republic of Moldova, over 1 million people hold Romanian citizenship and have the right to vote in the Romanian elections. They can participate in parliamentary, presidential and European Parliament elections, as well as national referendums, if such are held. Voting is possible either in person, at the polling stations established by Embassy of Romania in the Republic of Moldova, or by mail, if they preregistered for this type of voting.
In the 2024 European Parliament elections, the Moldovans with Romanian citizenship voted in record numbers, showing an increased interest in the Romanian and European democratic process. In the Republic of Moldova, almost 57,000 voters participated in the election of members of the European Parliament – by 19,000 more than in 2019. Overall, in 2024, about 209,000 persons voted abroad in Romania’s European Parliament elections. Thus, the share of voters from the Republic of Moldova in the total number of Romanian citizens abroad was about 27%. As a result of the elections, the PSD-PNL Alliance won the European Parliament elections with 54.9% of the vote. The United Right Alliance ranked second with 23.1%, followed by REPER with 5.5%. AUR won 4.6% of the votes from Romanian citizens living on the left side of the Prut. The highest turnout was recorded at polling stations in Chisinau and its suburban settlement and also in Orhei, Ialoveni, Ungheni, Straseni, Cahul, Soroca.
The smallest Romanian electoral activism in this year’s European Parliament elections was registered in Comrat, as well as in the northern districts of the republic – in Ocnita, Donduseni, Riscani and Soldanesti. It is very likely that the same territorial trends of electoral activism in the national elections in Romania will be repeated this autumn. For now, it remains to be seen whether the Moldovan voters with Romanian passports will appear at ballot boxes in the Romanian elections, repeating or even exceeding the turnout in the European Parliament elections.
In 2020, the Republic of Moldova made the exception
In the previous parliamentary elections held in Romania on December 6, 2020, the diaspora’s vote was double compared to four years ago, and the surprise was that the reformist party USR-Plus was followed by AUR, a party with a nationalist and unionist message, founded only one year before the elections. The exception to the diaspora vote was made by the Republic of Moldova, where over 37,600 Romanian citizens voted, and the election was won by the National Liberal Party, with over 40% of the poll, followed by the People’s Movement Party, founded by former President Traian Basescu, with over 30% of the vote.
In total, 265,490 electors of the Romanian diaspora voted in the 2020 parliamentary elections. The highest voter turnout in the diaspora was recorded in Italy (48,387 voters), the Republic of Moldova (37,632), Spain (33,576), the United Kingdom (31,507), Germany (30,493), France (11,695). At that time, USR-PLUS obtained over 29% of the diaspora’s vote, and PNL and AUR were within walking distance of each other. The newly founded Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) ranked first in Italy, and second in Spain - the countries with the largest communities of Romanians abroad - but missed out on the Republic of Moldova.
Vote of electors from the Republic of Moldova can seriously influence results of both elections
In this year’s parliamentary and presidential elections of Romania, the vote of the Romanian citizens from the Republic of Moldova can seriously influence the results of both elections. That is why in the electoral programs of the Romanian candidates, in addition to the promises that refer to the realities of Romania, some of the promises are expected to refer directly to the Republic of Moldova. As relevant and as precisely these promises will resonate with the expectations of Moldovan voters, as solid the results obtained by political competitors on the Moldovan electoral field will be.
It is obvious that the electoral programs of the contestants in the national elections of Romania will include, with reference to the Republic of Moldova, the plenary support of the Romanian political class for the European path of the Moldovan state with the objective of integrating the Republic of Moldova into the EU by 2030. The electoral programs of the Romanian political parties for this year’s European Parliament elections contained, in various drafts, objectives about the need to complete infrastructure projects between two states, facilitating and encouraging investments and entrepreneurship across the Prut, helping Moldova to gain energy independence. It was also proposed that Moldova should be evaluated on its own in the European accession process, decoupled from Ukraine, which may need more time for accession. Efforts to resolve the Transnistrian conflict and the allocation of funds to counter Russian subversions in the Republic of Moldova, including the replacement of telecommunications systems of Russian origin, were also planned.
Who will ignore this desideratum...
Two political parties, referring to the Republic of Moldova, included in their electoral programs for the European Parliament elections provisions about the objective of restoring Romanian national unity. Thus, the program of the United Right Alliance noted that “the union of all the Romanians within the same borders has become, with the opening of negotiations on the accession of the Republic of Moldova to the EU, an achievable goal.” The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), pleading for the accession of the Republic of Moldova to the European Union, also specified that “the freely consented union of the two Romanian states is the most concrete way in this regard”. AUR insisted on the idea of peaceful reunification with the Republic of Moldova, promising to take all necessary steps so that the Romanians from the Republic of Moldova have the same status as those in Romania.
The active participation in elections and the political vote of the Romanian voter from the Republic of Moldova will depend to a decisive extent on the presence of the Moldovan agenda in the electoral programs of the contestants and, last but not least, on the presence on the electoral lists of candidates domiciled on the left bank of the Prut. It is no secret that the most politically active Romanian citizens in the Republic of Moldova belong to the segment with unionist views of the Moldovan society. The competition for their votes implies the increasingly pronounced emphasizing of the desire for Romanian national reunification in the electoral message of the political parties. Whoever ignores this goal in this year’s election campaign will most likely fail to gain the votes of the Romanian electors from the Republic of Moldova.
IPN publishes in the Op-Ed rubric opinion pieces submitted by authors not affiliated with our editorial board. The opinions expressed in these articles do not necessarily coincide with the opinions of our editorial board.