Romanian Militant Democracy and the Time Machine
Romania was recently rocked by the annulment of presidential elections in December 2024, a crisis stifled by the March 2025 invalidation of Georgescu’s candidacy in do-over elections. Mr. Georgescu, an ultranationalist firebrand, presents himself in a MAGA-style as the tribune of “the People” and a warrior against a “Soros-driven” elite conspiracy. Europhile opponents present the invalidations as valiant examples of militant democracy and rule of law in action. I argue that the story is both simpler and more complex, partly a local variant of “authoritarian liberalism”, partly an example of idiosyncratic Eastern traditions of the RoL in Euro-friendly attire.
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Goat, Cabbage and Wolf
According to a flurry of recent news, snowballed in almost identical form in the Western press, the Romanian Constitutional Court has ruled, just before Christmas, to deny the primacy of EU law. More often than not, analogies with Poland were made, glossing on surface similarities. The juxtaposition is misleading. As the late János Kornai put it, simply because we [i.e., countries in the hinterland, ces pays là-bas] are in the same hospital, that does not mean we suffer from the same sicknesses.
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A Tale of Primacy
In its 18 May ruling Asociația „Forumul Judecătorilor din România”, the ECJ took a solid stance on the primacy of EU law by recognizing the binding nature of the Cooperation and Verification Mechanism established by the European Commission with respect to Romania in 2007. The judgment is a genuine guide to national courts on applying the primacy of EU law, especially as regards controversial issues such as the judicial independence and rule of law.
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