Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan will run as an independent in a 2025 rerun of Romania’s recently canceled presidential election, he announced at a press conference Monday.
“We are at a turning point, the most difficult since the revolution. I intend to run for president in 2025,” Dan said, adding that while he will run as an independent and that he is ready to discuss support for his candidacy with the country’s pro-European parties.
Dan, a 54-year-old mathematician and activist whose first name translates as “Little Nick,” is serving his second term as mayor of Bucharest. He founded and previously led a liberal party that gave rise to the Save Romania Union — currently the third-largest party in the parliament.
In his first campaign for mayor in 2016, Dan promised to eliminate corruption, tax evasion and money laundering — the hallmarks of previous mayors, one of whom was even jailed for graft.
He conveyed a similar message in announcing his candidacy on Monday, noting the need to tackle corruption, give the country a direction and heal social and cultural divisions.
“There are entire areas of the Romanian state captured by interest groups,” Dan said during the press conference. “It will be a tough fight between those who defend the public interest, and those who defend the interests of [such] groups.”
Romania’s top constitutional court on Dec. 6 scrapped a scheduled presidential election runoff after ultranationalist Călin Georgescu — a fierce critic of the European Union and NATO — won the first round as a virtual unknown who had barely registered in national opinion polls.
The court annulled the election after Romania’s security services said Georgescu had benefited from a TikTok campaign that resembled influence operations previously run by the Kremlin in Ukraine and Moldova.
The government must still put together a lineup for the new presidential election, which will take place next year.
