Southeast Europe’s pivotal election season is upon us

In Southeastern Europe, the last three months of 2024 are packed with political showdowns that will determine the region's future. Moldovans have the chance to take two big steps towards the European Union, Bulgarians have another chance to resolve their government crisis, and Romanians face a rather grim array of presidential candidates.

Moldova at a historic crossroads

The next election in Southeastern Europe is the presidential election in Moldova. They will be held on 20 October alongside an equally important referendum on EU accession. In the race for the presidential seat, the current liberal and pro-European president Maia Sandu is the favourite to win with over 36% of the total vote, according to a recent poll conducted by the Aspen Institute Romania in partnership with the Moldovan Foreign Policy Association and the anti-disinformation community Watchdog.md. 

As Moldovan investigative newspaper Ziarul de Gardă reported, Maia Sandu’s objectives for the next four years revolve around local development, healthcare investments, education, and peace. But, that’s not all. In September, Maia Sandu dismissed six judges and donated a €25.000 prize she received to repair a historic church, showing her apparent support for justice and religion. Yet, she’s not the only one that uses religion to win votes. Acting in favour of churches is one of the main ways in which Moscow influences elections in Moldova. Not long ago, Ziarul de Gardă published a video showing priests from the Metropolitanate of Moldova, charted under the Russian Orthodox Church, waiting at the Chișinău International Airport to fly to Moscow.

The Metropolitanate of Moldova responded with a press release saying their priests travel to Russia for spiritual, not political reasons. Fortunately for Sandu and pro-Europeans, the Russophile presidential candidate Alexandr Stoianoglo is predicted to earn only around 10% of the total votes. In an attempt to garner more votes for Stoianoglo, the leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova and Moldova’s former president Igor Dodon warned that Maia Sandu’s reelection is set to trigger “queer propaganda” in schools and “LGBT quotas” among the workers in state institutions. Dodon also called the EU referendum a “tool of trickery”, according to Ziarul de Gardă.

The conundrum of Bulgaria’s electoral system

Bulgaria is facing its seventh round of early parliamentary elections since 2021. This is because Bulgarian politicians failed to form a government after the last elections in June 2024. Now, another failure to form a majority could trigger a change in the electoral system.

The run-up to the elections, scheduled for 27 October, is already heating up. According to the Bulgarian news platform Mediapool, leader Kiril Petkov stated that if the DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms; centrist, runner-up in the June elections) enters parliament, his own centrist PP-DB coalition won’t cooperate with them. According to Petkov, DPS leader Delyan Peevski has made a habit of undermining anti-corruption reforms when they reach critical points. Just recently, Nikolai Marchenko of the Bulgarian investigative newspaper Bivol quoted the leader of the BOEC anti-corruption movement, Georgi Georgiev, as saying that “Peevski stole 50 million leva (about 25 million euro)” from a Bulgarian bank.

Boyko Borisov, the leader of the GERB-SDS coalition (which came first in the June elections with 24% of the vote), recently proposed changing Bulgaria's electoral system to avoid political deadlock. His idea is to switch to a model with a majority bonus. “Why do we stand like lambs, waiting and blaming the people and the low voter turnout? We should offer them something that will motivate them – a proportional-majoritarian vote. There will be more candidates, more individuals will come forward”, he suggested per Mediapool.

Is Romania’s future president a sure disaster?

Romania is set to have presidential elections on 24 November and parliamentary elections on 1 December. Adrian Mihălțianu, the editorial director of the Romanian news platform PressOne, says Romanians face a disastrous choice for the presidency: the candidates are imposters, poorly educated people or people loyal to Western allies with a level of knowledge “dangerously close to zero”.

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