Meloni or Orbán? What would the foreign policy of an AUR government look like?

Article by Marius Ghincea, ETH Zurich & Quartet Institute

Over the past thirty years, the "Snagov consensus" has provided Romania with three pillars of a relatively clear "grand strategy": the highest possible degree of integration into the European Union, the consolidation of the strategic partnership with the United States, along with NATO membership and local participation in defense and deterrence within the alliance. The differences between the parties that have come and gone in the legislature and government over the years have been essentially one of style and intensity, not of orientation or priorities. AUR is the first major party to explicitly challenge this orientation and some of the traditional priorities associated with it.

If AUR comes to power, Romania will probably have a foreign policy closer to the Orbán model, promoting a multi-vector strategy, more restrained towards the Russian Federation than that promoted by Hungary, but also more irredentist towards the Republic of Moldova and in opposition to the European Union's integration projects.

The electoral success of the Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) in the May 2025 presidential elections, when George Simion won almost 41% of the votes in the first round, and in last winter's parliamentary elections, when the party came second with 18% of the votes, paints a worrying picture of the party winning the next elections and forming the government or even providing the president of Romania. This is also shown by all recent sociological studies, according to which the AUR has managed to consolidate itself as the main opposition force. In this context, it is important to ask ourselves what Romania's foreign and security policy would look like under the leadership of a party that has distinguished itself by challenging the main pillars of the “Snagov consensus” and the Euro-Atlantic tradition of post-communist Romanian diplomacy.

Over the past thirty years, the “Snagov consensus” has provided Romania with three pillars of a relatively clear "grand strategy": the highest possible degree of integration into the European Union, the consolidation of the strategic partnership with the United States, along with NATO membership and local participation in defense and deterrence within the alliance. The differences between the parties that have come and gone in the legislature and government over the years have been essentially one of style and intensity, not of orientation or priorities. AUR is the first major party to explicitly challenge this orientation and some of the traditional priorities associated with it. In the words of George Simion, AUR proclaims that it wants Romania to no longer "kneel before the EU and NATO," although it admits that membership in these organizations is essential for the security and prosperity of our country. 

AUR's positions on foreign policy and security issues are not exceptional or unique in the European Union, as they are characteristic of almost all Eurosceptic and radical right-wing parties on the continent, from the United Kingdom to Poland. In fact, there are already studies showing that AUR has adopted or aligned its political positions through learning or emulating its partners in the European Eurosceptic groups to which it belongs, such as the Law and Justice Party in Poland.

However, it is important to note that at the European level there is no single model for the behavior and foreign and security policy positions of radical right-wing parties. European parties actually fall across a fairly broad spectrum on the main foreign and security policy issues. And in the case of far-right parties that are in government, two models have emerged in the European Union over the past five years: "Meloni" and "Orbán". Both are products of the radical and illiberal right, but they offer very different answers to the question "what do you do once you get into government?" in the context of EU and NATO membership. 

Between these two models, all existing indications, including the recent election of Dan Dungaciu as first vice president of the party, lead us to believe that AUR would tend more toward an "Orbán in Bucharest" scenario—somewhat more moderate in its relationship with Russia, but probably more irredentist in its relationship with the Republic of Moldova, and just as Eurosceptic as the government in Budapest.

Meloni or Orbán?

The Meloni model describes a type of radicalism which, once it reached the top of the government in Rome, significantly tempered its foreign agenda and often ended up aligning itself with the policies and priorities of the European institutions in Brussels. Although labeled as successors to Mussolini's fascist movement and expressing deeply Eurosceptic positions, Georgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia (FdI) has proven to be much more moderate in terms of revolutionizing Italy's foreign and security policy. Since coming to power in 2022, Meloni and her party have maintained their sovereigntist rhetoric and criticized the European Union, while remaining supporters of Ukraine, keeping Italy firmly anchored in NATO, and avoiding major conflicts with the European Commission, in contrast to the cases of Poland and Hungary. Meloni has instead used European institutions, both supranational and intergovernmental, as negotiating spaces to obtain concessions and economic and political benefits for Italy. From this point of view, a number of political scientists and analysts have spoken of a strategy of "radical normalization" that characterizes the Meloni model, a strategy through which Fratelli d'Italia maintains its caustic cultural and identity rhetoric towards Brussels and European integration, but in terms of concrete actions remains within the parameters of the red lines set in Brussels. 

The Orbán model represents the opposite pole of this spectrum of radical right-wing party positions. Over the last decade, but especially since the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Viktor Orbán and his party, Fidesz, have turned their country's EU and NATO membership into a tool for blackmail and systematic obstruction, promoting a multi-vector foreign policy aimed at maximizing their room for maneuver and the geopolitical benefits offered by their strategic position. To this end, he has cultivated privileged relations with Russia, which he continues despite the war in Ukraine, and with China, but has sought to defend his status in the EU and NATO, and during Donald Trump's Republican administrations, he has consistently sought to deepen relations with Washington. From this perspective, the obvious objective behind the Orbán model is to reduce risks, extract the material benefits offered by membership of the West, while keeping the door open to Chinese and Russian influence in order to increase its room for maneuver in its relationship with Brussels and, during the Democratic administrations, with Washington. 

These two models are, as mentioned earlier, at opposite ends of a fairly broad spectrum of attitudes between the two, but they provide practical political benchmarks that can help us analyze and politically position the AUR's foreign and security policy positions within the broader spectrum of radical right-wing parties in Europe. 

AUR: Orbán in Bucharest

On foreign policy and security issues, AUR is in the process of crystallizing the party's doctrinal vision, with notable differences between what we hear in George Simion's public statements and what we read in the party's programmatic documents. The recent entry of Dan Dungaciu into the party leadership will undoubtedly lead to a doctrinal and intellectual sophistication of the party's positions in the near future, so his ideas deserve attention in any analysis of the AUR's approach to foreign policy. 

In terms of its pro-Western orientation, the AUR's official program maintains a relatively solid commitment to membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as an anchor and guarantee of security. The document proclaims that "the Euro-Atlantic option is strategic and irrevocable for us". Romania is defined as "the geopolitical frontier between the Russian world and the European world". However, the program moderates this strategic direction by explicitly and directly introducing the concept of "multi-vector foreign policy" which, together with references to the Silk Road (the equivalent of the Belt and Road Initiative), suggests an openness to diversifying partnerships beyond the traditional Euro-Atlantic axis. 

In this sense, the diversification of foreign policy and the multi-vectoral approach can be seen in Simion's recent interviews, but also in Dan Dungaciu's positions. In an interview in May 2025, just before the second round of the presidential elections, Simion stated that "Russia does not have the potential to pose a significant threat to the world's largest military alliance," and in the Euronews debate with Nicușor Dan, he called for "neutrality, not escalation, not supplying weapons", describing Romania's donation of a Patriot system to Ukraine as "national treason". At the same time, in Parliament, AUR voted against laws that would have allowed Russian drones to be shot down, and Dan Dungaciu, in a series of interviews with journalist Marius Tucă, put forward a relatively coherent vision in which Romania is a risk-averse geopolitical player that should rely on a strategy of hedging and accommodation. 

Dungaciu rationalises this position by stating that "Romania has tied its short-term destiny to developments in Brussels. For a country like Romania, at a time when everything is in turmoil, to have such firm and radical options is irresponsible". In this sense, Dungaciu calls for us to move beyond what he sees as an "ideological Phanariot regime" (i.e., alignment with EU positions) and turn toward "Trump's world", as if replacing European ideologies with Trump's American ones would not also constitute "Phanariotism". These positions bring the party closer to the Orbán model, but with an important nuance. AUR does not (yet) cultivate direct relations with Moscow and does not reproduce the rhetoric of personal proximity between Trump, Putin, and Orbán.

When it comes to European affairs and European integration, there is a much clearer convergence between the political program and the public statements of Simion and Dungaciu. The party rejects the idea of European federalism and so-called supranational interference with political autonomy and national sovereignty. In his most recent statements, Dungaciu has been significantly harsher on the European project, which he describes as totalitarian, comparing initiatives to defend democracy, such as the European Democracy Shield announced by the European Commission, with communist measures from the 1980s, claiming that these initiatives are based on "the idea that European citizens are stupid and need a wise father figure". From this point of view, comparisons with communism are omnipresent, and open opposition to European integration projects is the most consistent dimension of the AUR's foreign policy vision. However, the party does not support leaving the EU, but adopts a position similar to that of Orbán and Meloni: "Eurorealism".

What distinguishes the AUR's attitude from Orbán's model is the territorial dimension of irredentism. Viktor Orbán promotes an identity-based policy towards minorities from the perspective of a conception of the Hungarian nation as a cultural, symbolic one, devoid of revisionist rhetoric regarding existing borders. Budapest distributes passports to ethnic Hungarians and uses them both electorally, in Hungary's domestic politics, and externally in its relations with host countries, without making explicit claims to revise existing borders. In the case of the AUR, however, there is a revisionist territorial dimension to Romanian irredentism. Reunification with Moldova appears as a priority in the party's program, and Dungaciu confirms in multiple interviews that his connection with Simion dates back to 2012, when they were both active in the unionist movement. Simion is also banned from entering both Moldova and Ukraine. The AUR explicitly supports, especially in its political rhetoric and less so in its programmatic documents, the modification of borders through union with Moldova and the annexation of territories belonging to Ukraine that once belonged to Romania. Thus, the AUR's irredentist policy would lead to a freeze in relations with Chisinau and significant tension in relations with Kiev, similar to the relations that Hungary and, more recently, Slovakia have with the country at war. The AUR's foreign policy towards the East would be defined by the adoption of the Russian discourse according to which Ukraine and Moldova are artificial states that have no right to exist on the map of Europe. And this could have significant implications for regional stability and security. 

In many respects, the AUR's foreign policy and security vision is typical of countries such as Hungary, Serbia, or Turkey—authoritarian or illiberal countries that seek to stabilize and secure their political regimes by maximizing their room for maneuver, reaping benefits by playing on multiple fronts, and minimizing external influence that could jeopardize the stability of these regimes, which erode democratic institutions in the countries they rule. In short, the foreign policy promoted by the AUR is closer to the Orbán model than to the Meloni model. It is characterized by a return to roughly the same type of strategy used by Nicolae Ceaușescu between 1968 and the 1980s, but also to the typical strategy of the Romanian Principalities and Romania before 1883, when Carol I abandoned his multi-vector foreign policy and signed secret treaties with Austria-Hungary and Prussian Germany. From this point of view, it is not wrong to call the AUR's foreign policy vision "neo-Ceaușist", because it borrows the vision and "grand strategy" thinking of the former communist leader for Romania.

The limitations and risks of an Orbán-style foreign policy

The strategic revolution that the AUR proposes for Romania's foreign and security policy may seem attractive to those dissatisfied with the quiet and often reactive, even autopilot, diplomacy that Romania has pursued over the last decade. Similarly, the diagnoses that AUR makes of many problems in our diplomacy and foreign policy are often correct and true. However, the Orbán-style treatment that the party intends to apply to Romania if it comes to power is extremely risky and has structural limitations. 

The lesson from Hungary shows us that the recurrent use of the veto and blocking European decisions, for example, leads to the loss of European money and invariably leads to political isolation and the loss of trust of partners and allies. Aggressive hedging would quickly erode the trust of partners, further weaken Romania's influence in EU and NATO decision-making processes, and could lead to political and financial sanctions at a time when the Romanian economy remains deeply dependent on the European single market.

The irredentist dimension amplifies these risks. A policy of challenging existing borders, whether packaged as "national reunification", would undermine relations with Chisinau and Kiev, fuel Russian narratives about "artificial states", and put Romania in direct contradiction with the fundamental principles of the post-1990 European order. Instead of strengthening Romania's role as a promoter of Moldova and Ukraine in the EU, such a policy could push Bucharest into the same category as actors such as Russia. And once Pandora's box of territorial revisions is opened, all the surrounding countries may want to be "great" again. Greater Hungary, Greater Serbia, Greater Bulgaria, Greater Ukraine would all translate into territorial claims against Romania, whether we are talking about Transylvania, Banat, Dobrogea, or Bucovina.

Finally, a neo- Ceaușist foreign policy is neither sustainable nor cheap, as we can see both in the case of Hungary, which can hardly be said to have benefited greatly from a multi-vector foreign policy, and in the case of Romania in the 1980s. It requires massive investments in diplomatic and economic capital in multiple directions, which a state with limited resources such as Romania can only sustain by sacrificing other domestic priorities. The most likely result would not be a "sovereign Romania" with extensive room for maneuver, but a more isolated Romania with reduced influence in the Western institutions that matter most to its security and prosperity.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES).

About the author:

Marius Ghincea is a political scientist and researcher at ETH Zurich, co-founder of the Quartet Institute, a think tank in Bucharest, and Visiting Fellow at the European University Institute in Florence.