What Ukraine can expect from Romania’s new president and why he is different
Romania’s newly elected president, Nicușor Dan, has created a Europe-wide sensation by defeating the notorious pro-Russian candidate George Simion.
Dan is an outsider to the political establishment and a figure to whom populism is foreign.
Much in Nicușor Dan’s life and career has been unconventional. His family life is no exception. He is raising two children and plans to get married.
But when it comes to Ukraine, Dan aligns with the European mainstream, which is good news for Kyiv.
Read more about Romania’s new president in the article by Sergiy Sydorenko, European Pravda's editor: Enemy of developers, capital mayor, Olympiad champion: who is Nicușor Dan, Romania’s new president.
Dan’s biographies always begin with one fact and for good reason. Romania’s new president is a mathematician by training and by mindset. In high school, he twice won gold medals at the International Mathematical Olympiad, at ages 17 and 18.
He witnessed the fall of the Ceaușescu regime while studying mathematics in Bucharest but soon moved to France, where he earned a master’s and a PhD from the University of Paris.
However, he didn’t settle in France and returned to Romania, where he co-founded the Bucharest School of Advanced Studies, a private math-focused institution modeled on the French system. He also tried to unite Romanian students studying abroad.
In the mid-2000s, Dan found his calling in civic activism. In 2006, he co-founded and led the Association for the Rescue of Bucharest.
Post-socialist Bucharest faced problems familiar to Kyiv: chaotic, semi-legal construction; collusion between developers and city officials; and destruction of green spaces.
Dan first ran for mayor in 2012, finishing fourth. Realising that true influence required a political vehicle, he created the Save Bucharest Union in 2015, which soon evolved into a national party – the Save Romania Union (USR).
Running under this banner, Dan contested the 2016 mayoral race, earning second place with 30.5% of the vote. Although he lost, the USR entered the Bucharest City Council and parliament that same year, finishing third nationally.
Dan remained committed to "saving" Bucharest, and in 2020 he was elected mayor. Even in office, he stayed an opponent of the system and real estate interests.
Notably, he ran as an independent in the 2020, 2024 and 2025 elections. He left USR in 2017 due to ideological disagreements, making his worldview difficult to categorise.
Dan’s insistence on his "right to silence" on major political issues may be surprising, but it also underscores his integrity.
Importantly for Ukraine, Dan supports aid to Kyiv, though not unconditionally. His presidency will be pro-Romanian and pro-Moldovan, but not explicitly pro-Ukrainian.