In an interview with POLITICO at a friend’s house in a village outside Bucharest, the populist admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President-elect Donald Trump doubled down on his frustration with multinationals in Romania.
“If today, like the Romanian people, I pay for water, do you know where I pay? I pay to a French firm which didn’t invest, didn’t contribute a nail, but collects the money. I also pay a foreign company for natural gas. I also pay for electricity from a foreign company. I buy my gasoline, my own gasoline, and where do I pay? Also to a foreigner,” he said.
In terms of how he would combat these companies in key utility sectors, Georgescu complained — as in many places in Eastern Europe — that the country’s prize assets had been improperly sold off in a murky wave of privatizations after the fall of communism. He vowed that he would use his first 100 days to claw back these assets.
“I’m interested that the Romanian people, not foreigners, should have property in my country,” Georgescu insisted.
When asked about the scale of his plans to get the assets back, he said: “I was referring to recovering what was privatized and was wrongly privatized. In Romania, no privatization is justified.”
Such clawbacks would be bound to trigger waves of political and legal battles, but Georgescu has shown a clear streak of animosity to big business in his campaigning. He also accused U.S. arms manufacturers of helping fuel the war in Ukraine.