Why does no combat AUR? And why before the European Parliament the radicals show their contempt for the EU? An analysis signed by Sabina Fati.
More than a month and a half before the local and European parliamentary elections, polls show an accelerated decline of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians. AUR is no longer jamming, and within the party, George Simion is accused of cheating in the Bucharest campaign. Instead Euroscepticism and anti-EU messages populated the AUR Conference entitled Make Europe Great Again, where populists and second-rate extremists from Europe and the United States came to talk about nationalism, family, abortion, anti-LGBT and anti-migration.
AUR would like to restore the greatness of Europe by going back in time, a pirouette back to the times of the dictatorship, as can be seen from the speeches held at this conference, in which three major themes stood out: (i) one of the favorite themes was abortion, which Polish conservatives banned in 2019, an idea for which Romanian radicals also campaign. AUR Senator Claudiu Târziu said that “Europe must return to a culture of life” and “give up the culture of death”, “especially through what the European Commission is promoting which seeks to transform the killing of unborn children into a fundamental right European, which provides for constraints and obligations for those who defend life”. It is about a proposal for a resolution of the European Parliament by which the EU states can no longer ban abortions. Brussels is worried not only about the Polish case, but also about the tradition in Malta, which, for example, does not even allow women with cancer to be treated if they are pregnant. They have to wait until they give birth before they have access to the treatment that could save them. Medical abortion is also prohibited in Slovakia and Hungary. Budapest recently passed a law requiring women seeking an abortion to listen to the “fetal heartbeat,” and the Bratislava Parliament has already rejected several bills aimed at banning abortion. In Romania, abortion is free de jure, but de facto, just like in Italy or Slovakia, the vast majority of doctors declare themselves conscientious objectors, which makes access to abortion services almost impossible; (ii) the trend toward federalization of the European Union, in fact increasingly timid, is a favorite topic of radicals across the continent. They would like the nation states to stop ceding their sovereignty to the EU. In other words, there should be no more supranational institutions that force countries to certain standards, such as Justice, Economy, Agriculture. “The EU does not mean Europe,” said an extremist Dutch MEP, Rob Roos, while Gheorghe Piperea, professor at the Faculty of Law and candidate for the European Parliament on the AUR lists, believes that the EU “is not about making life better, but about communism “; (iii) admiration for true conservative leaders was brought up by AUR President George Simion, who once again paid laudatio to Viktor Orban, the increasingly marginalized pro-Putin Hungarian Prime Minister in the EU and NATO. Viktor Orban has become the model of Romanian extremists, but he also has admirers in other countries among Western populists, who do not understand why Russia is dangerous for the West. A pro-Family and anti-LGBT ideologue in the United States, Jack Posobiec also recalled the Hungarian prime minister who, like Javier Gerardo Milei, the president of Argentina, “showed people how to fight”.
George Simion also proposed a joint declaration of the conservative parties not to vote for Ursula von der Leyen for a new mandate at the head of the European Commission. The idea is not his. Viktor Orban asked at the Nationalist Right Conference in Brussels two weeks ago to replace the EU leadership after the European Parliament elections because he would not have achieved any of his goals. The Romanian radicals were also not at this Conference, which did not prevent them from admiring the Hungarian Prime Minister’s speech. They also invited him to Bucharest, although without expecting him to come.
The Romanian extremists need an external and contemporary model for their future, because the appeal to the past does not sound good, and the legionnaires with whom they would like to compare themselves have had their share of crimes. Viktor Orban is popular in Romania, and polls show that he is also admired. Unlike the Romanian radicals, however, Orban has programs and is surrounded by well-educated people, but even so he is losing speed.
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