Sunday’s European Elections: Pro-EU Parties Maintain Influence

On Sunday, Romania, Portugal, and Poland held nationwide elections. In Romania and Portugal, the results largely continued the countries’ previous trajectories, with centrist, pro-European Union parties maintaining power. Poland’s final outcome is still uncertain, but Sunday’s first-round results suggest the next president will likely be right-leaning and clash with the centrist coalition that controls Parliament.

Romanian Presidential Election

The most controversial of the three elections was Romania. Prior to this year’s vote, Romania held elections late last year, when Calin Georgescu, who was critical of the European Union, led the first round of voting with 23%. That result would have triggered a runoff between Georgescu and Elena Lasconi, the second-place candidate and a member of the Save Romania Union.

However, before the runoff could take place, the Romanian Constitutional Court invalidated the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference and irregularities in the first round, which were said to benefit Georgescu, who pledged to end military aid to Ukraine if he was elected president. Points of concern for the Romanian Constitutional Court were Georgescu’s TikTok account, which had amassed more than 646,000 followers ahead of the vote, along with concerns about Russian hacking of Romanian electoral systems.

Romanian officials rescheduled the election for May 2025 but barred Georgescu from running due to pending criminal charges. In the first round of the 2025 election, right-wing candidate George Simion led with 41%, followed by centrist Nicusor Dan, the mayor of Bucharest. In Sunday’s runoff between the two candidates, Dan won with 53.6% to Simion's 46.4%, a result seen as a victory for pro-European Union factions.

Poland Presidential Election

In Poland, incumbent President Andrzej Duda, a member of the right-wing Law and Justice party, is term-limited, opening the door for a new leader. On Sunday, Rafal Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw and the candidate backed by the incumbent centrist legislative coalition, led the vote with 31.36%. The runner-up, with 29.5%, was Karol Nawrocki, a right-wing candidate supported by the Law and Justice party, the current opposition party in Poland’s legislature. A runoff between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki will be held on June 1.

Despite being the runner-up in the first round, Nawrocki will likely have an advantage in the June election, as the next two candidates with the highest vote shares, right-wing politicians Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun, are expected to back him over the more liberal Rafal Trzaskowski.

Portugal Legislative Election

Portugal’s election was a snap legislative vote called by President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa after the incumbent government lost a vote of no confidence amid allegations of a conflict of interest involving Prime Minister Luis Montenegro’s family business, though Montenegro denies any wrongdoing.

In the snap election, Montenegro’s center-right Social Democratic Party increased its seat share in Parliament, rising from 80 to 89 seats — still short of a majority. The Socialist Party, which had worked with the PSD on the 2025 budget bill, saw a significant drop in support, falling from 78 seats to 58. Some of those losses went to the nationalist conservative party Chega, which grew from 50 to 58 seats.

Similar to the situation in Germany, where the center-right Christian Democratic Union refuses to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, Montenegro has said he will not form a coalition with the right-wing Chega party. To gain a majority required to pass legislation, this leaves him the only option of negotiating legislative support from the Socialist Party, just as he did before the election.