Why Romania's president has started criticising Brussels and what consequences this could have
Romania is entering an even more turbulent period and is becoming a less predictable partner for Ukraine.
President Nicușor Dan, who had been perceived as a liberal pro-European leader, unexpectedly cancelled the celebration of Europe Day on 9 May 2026, withdrew the invitation to Roberta Metsola and instead delivered a speech about the "mistakes of Europe", built on falsehoods and manipulations.
Read more in the article by European Pravda editor Sergiy Sydorenko: Is Europe losing Romania? Why the "liberal" president Nicușor Dan has sided with eurosceptics.
This story began amid a political crisis in Romania, where parliament recently dismissed the pro-European government.
Even then, there was speculation that the president himself might have been behind the government’s collapse. Now Nicușor Dan has fueled these suspicions by emphasising that Romania needs a "pro-Western", rather than specifically pro-European, course, while calling for closer alignment with the United States.
On Europe Day itself, 9 May, Dan delivered a short speech in which he stated that "Europe is a topic that divides our society".
The central idea of his address was the alleged failure of European policies.
The president also urged Romanians to look towards the United States, noting that "Romania needs an EU that will have honest, firm cooperation with the US on equal terms."
Dan appears to have chosen the political niche of a "sovereigntist" and is already competing for the electorate of the far-right.
In his Europe Day speech, he also focused specifically on the political crisis.
"I once again declare: Romania will have a pro-Western government within a reasonable timeframe," he said, once again deliberately using the term "pro-Western" to stress orientation towards the United States rather than solely towards the EU.
And this could well be a warning sign.
After all, the far-right eurosceptics also insist that they are pro-Western.
Public backing from the United States, in fact, allows them to make such claims. This raises the question: is Dan considering bringing them into a future government coalition? There is no answer to that yet.
Following the collapse of the government, the number one political danger in Romania is the possibility of snap elections. If elections were held now, they would likely deliver victory to the far-right.
The second major danger is the creation of a coalition involving the far right within the current parliament. A scenario in which Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), "for the sake of saving the state", forms an alliance with the scandal-plagued Social Democratic Party is being seriously discussed, even though top politicians usually deny such a possibility.
Another possible motive attributed to the president in Romanian political discussions is his attempt to appeal to the United States and to the MAGA circle around Donald Trump.
And this is not the first time Dan has done so. He was the only president from an EU member state who agreed to join Trump’s so-called "Peace Council" – a controversial gathering that was also attended by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Incidentally, Dan is also competing with AUR on this field, since the party is considered the main partner of MAGA circles in Romania.
At the same time, however, as the Romanian president shifts towards euroskepticism, a new figure has emerged on the country’s political stage who now embodies pro-European Romania. This politician could potentially rally pro-European voters disappointed by the president’s changing political image.
That figure is former Prime Minister Ilie Bolojan, whose conflict with Nicușor Dan the president does little to hide. On 9 May, Bolojan delivered a speech diametrically opposed to Dan's, insisting that Romania's future lies in Europe.