After 35 years of broad consensus over the orientation and main parameters of Romania’s foreign and security policy, Romanian foreign policy has become a highly salient political issue in elections. After the cancellation of the 2024 presidential elections due to alleged interference, Romania’s re-run 2025 presidential elections have contained a good dose of confrontation over the country’s foreign policy priorities.
In the context of this heightened salience of foreign policy topics and enhanced confrontation over the future direction of the country’s orientation, I wanted to trace how the leading presidential candidates think about Romania’s strategic role. To move beyond anecdote or partisan interpretation, I sought to map the foreign policy positions of the five leading candidates—Nicușor Dan, Crin Antonescu, Victor Ponta, Elena Lasconi, and George Simion—into a structured comparative framework.
The table below contains a broad overview of the positions of these leading candidates on the key issues related to the country’s foreign and security policy.
| Dimension | Nicușor Dan | Crin Antonescu | Victor Ponta | Elena Lasconi | George Simion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| EU | Firmly pro-EU; warns extremist “experiments” could endanger membership. | Pro-EU, “We are Europe”; aims for an active role in EU decision-making. | “Romania First” in the EU; supports expansion to Moldova/Balkans but demands equal treatment in funding and veto rights. | Pro-integration, values diplomacy; positions Romania as an “outpost of Western democracy.” | Moderate eurosceptic; demands equal treatment for Romania, rejects sovereignty transfers and deeper political union. |
| NATO | Atlanticist; calls for >2 % GDP defense spending and modernization, supports NATO defense of Moldova. | Unreservedly pro-NATO; wants ≥2.5 % GDP and expansion of NATO bases in Romania. | Budget >3 % GDP by 2026; expands Kogălniceanu base and urges Europe to shoulder more defense burden. | Strongly pro-NATO; retains US troops, expands the Bucharest Nine format, and updates national defense strategy. | Stays in NATO but promises neutrality in conflicts; avoids external military engagements. |
| USA | Values US alliance but wants Europe (including Romania) to assume more responsibility if US withdraws. | Indispensable strategic partner; sees no EU–US conflict and wants Romania to offer something unique to Washington. | Pragmatic, Trump-friendly; promotes transactional military cooperation and increased US presence. | Maintains close US ties; will meet the US president early to secure troop presence. | Formal cooperation with US, but neutral on interventions; reserves right to refuse unfavorable US requests. |
| Russia & Eastern Neighbors | Firmly anti-Russia; backs Ukraine and UN, calls for NATO defense of Moldova and a “just peace” for Ukraine. | Anti-Kremlin; supports strengthening NATO’s eastern flank and “firm guarantees” for Moldova. | Condemns the war, supports limited aid to Ukraine, halts grain exports, and favors peace negotiations. | Pro-West; opposes Putin’s regime, endorses sanctions and aid for Ukraine within Western consensus. | Total neutrality; sends no weapons or troops, refuses military involvement even if Moldova is attacked. |
| Energy | Advocates diversification from Russia and investments in domestic capacity and green transition. | Varied energy mix (gas, nuclear, +10 GW renewables via EU funds) for self-sufficiency and independence. | Open to Chinese and other foreign investments with safeguards; exploits Black Sea gas. | Supports EU renewable projects and resource diversification via local production and EU funding. | Energy nationalism: state reclaims strategic assets, low prices, domestic production prioritized, no climate agenda. |
| Balkans | Supports stability and Western Balkan EU accession, maintaining cordial neighbourly relations. | Seeks regional leadership via Three Seas Initiative and key partnerships in Central & Southeast Europe. | Backs Western Balkans’ EU path and a Warsaw–Bucharest–Ankara axis for stability and joint projects. | Maintains good neighbour relations, supports democratic reforms and EU aspirations in the Balkans. | Prioritizes bilateral relations based on national interests and is skeptical of multilateral commitments without clear benefits. |
| Moldova & Unification | Prioritizes Moldova’s security and EU path, no immediate unification promises. | Political and security convergence, know-how transfer, and “borderless” EU unification vision. | Supports Moldova’s EU accession and defense, prefers “two states, one people” over unification. | Creates a shared political/economic space through EU integration, removing barriers between Romania and Moldova. | Explicit pro-unification, seeks referendum and political steps, but rejects military intervention in Moldova. |
| Diaspora & Migration | Strengthens diaspora representation and voting rights; focuses on Romanian expats’ rights. | Respects diaspora, extends multi-day voting, supports cultural programs, free movement, and balanced asylum. | Promises dignified treatment for diaspora, addresses migration’s economic causes, avoids anti-immigrant rhetoric. | Increases diaspora MPs, improves consular services, and adopts a balanced refugee policy. | Defends diaspora legally/diplomatically, opposes EU migrant quotas, and favors very strict immigration policies. |
| China & BRI | No detailed public stance; expected to follow EU’s selective cooperation and 5G security rules. | No explicit statements; will align with EU/US approach, cautious of strategic Chinese investments. | Beijing-friendly; supports Chinese investments in energy and infrastructure with critical safeguards. | Skeptical of authoritarian powers; will apply EU screening and uphold human rights in China relations. | No clear position; pragmatic, open to BRI benefits but vigilant about political influence. |
Based on public statements, strategic signals, and electoral manifestos, I have also mapped their positions in two coordinate charts that reveal underlying cleavages in orientation and cooperation preferences.
Chart A above reveals an asymmetrical configuration. Three candidates—Dan, Antonescu, and Lasconi—cluster firmly in the West & Multilateralism quadrant. They uphold Romania’s Euro-Atlantic identity as a structural anchor and advocate for Romania’s active participation in EU and NATO initiatives. Lasconi’s framing is particularly values-based, emphasizing democracy promotion and strategic deterrence. Dan and Antonescu also converge on defense modernization and Western alignment, though Antonescu introduces a note of institutional pragmatism in calling for a more visible Romanian voice within NATO decision-making.
Victor Ponta is positioned more cautiously: still within the Western field of gravity, but on the threshold of conditional multilateralism. He promotes deepened defense cooperation with the U.S., especially through bilateral formats, but combines this with occasional unilateral trade or agricultural policy stances. His foreign policy is more instrumental than principled, and distinctively post-ideological.
George Simion sits alone in the Nonaligned Sovereigntist space. His vision is neither fully Eastern nor Western, and it emphasizes neutrality, restrained international commitments, and “strategic autonomy” in practice rather than rhetoric. His opposition to Romanian involvement in foreign wars—even defensive interventions for Moldova—suggests a repositioning of foreign policy as sovereignty preservation rather than projection of interests or values.
The second chart disaggregates the Western axis, allowing us to distinguish between those who see the EU as Romania’s core strategic community versus those who favor a privileged bilateral relationship with the United States.
Here again, Dan and Lasconi appear in the EU & Multilateralism quadrant, joined by Antonescu, whose position is more centrist on the EU–US axis. Antonescu remains pro-EU in principle, but his rhetoric places more emphasis on the strategic indispensability of the U.S., advocating that Romania “offer something Washington cannot ignore.” His location at the midline between EU and U.S. commitments reflects this balancing act.
Ponta, unsurprisingly considering his recent meetings with Trump’s family members and visits to Washington and Mar-a-Lago, emerges as the most Atlanticist candidate, positioned in the US & Multilateralism quadrant. He supports greater U.S. troop presence and has framed NATO cooperation in transactional, rather than normative, terms. Simion remains the outlier—positioned closer to the US & Unilateralism quadrant, though his foreign policy is not Atlanticist but sovereigntist in logic, with selective reliance on U.S. security guarantees.
Methodology
My analysis is based on a structured qualitative assessment of the foreign policy positions articulated by the five major candidates: Nicușor Dan, Crin Antonescu, Victor Ponta, Elena Lasconi, and George Simion. The analysis draws on public sources including candidate interviews in national newspapers and news platforms, electoral manifestos, speeches, official social media statements, and televised debates published between January-April 2025.
The analytical process unfolded in three steps:
First, I defined, deductively, a set of ten key foreign policy dimensions to capture the breadth of strategic orientation and cooperation preferences. These include: (1) EU integration, (2) NATO commitment, (3) US bilateral relations, (4) policy toward Russia and Ukraine, (5) energy security and diversification, (6) regional diplomacy in the Balkans, (7) Moldova and unification, (8) diaspora and migration, (9) China and the Belt and Road Initiative, and (10) overall strategic alignment. Each candidate’s position was synthesized in a short summary and cross-validated against direct quotes where available.
Second, I defined two distinct two-dimensional maps containing the key dimensions shaping the political conflict over foreign policy in Romania today. These are the East-West orientation and the foreign policy strategy of the country (aligned/multilateral or unilateral/sovereignist) for the first matrix while the second one focuses on the intra-Western clash between Brussels and Washington, together with the foreign policy strategy.
Finally, each candidate was assigned a qualitative score on a 0–1 scale for each axis. Scores were based on explicit commitments (e.g., support for NATO budget increases), strategic framing (e.g., emphasis on EU institutional reform vs. bilateral ties with the US), and implicit preferences (e.g., opposition to sending weapons to Ukraine or to sanctions regimes). Scores were normalized for comparability and then plotted using a 2×2 chart with quadrant labels.
These charts are not intended to offer definitive or exhaustive assessments. Rather, they aim to make visible the policy patterns implicit in each candidate’s foreign policy discourse. Where public positions were ambiguous, I positioned the candidates conservatively, prioritizing the most consistent or recent statement.
Conclusions
As expected, the positions of the leading candidates reveal a meaningful spectrum of foreign policy visions. The post-1989 consensus is no longer monolithic. Instead, we now observe three distinct orientations:
- Embedded multilateralism, represented by Dan, Antonescu, and Lasconi;
- Transactional cynicism, articulated by Ponta;
- Sovereign nonalignment, defended by Simion.
What is at stake in these elections, then, is not Romania’s alignment in a formal sense—no candidate advocates EU or NATO exit—but the mode through which Romania interprets and enacts that alignment. Whether the country presents itself as a builder, a broker, or a buffer will depend significantly on the strategic vision endorsed by the next president.
Of course, how much of these foreign policy positions will actually be followed through by the winning candidate remains an open question. Both Crin Antonescu and Victor Ponta carry a track record that casts doubt on their consistency and credibility—raising legitimate concerns about whether their campaign rhetoric will translate into coherent foreign policy action once in office. For example, while Antonescu now promises to increase funding and improve human capital at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the governing coalition backing his candidacy approved a 20% budget cut for the ministry earlier this year.