A year before, on Saturday, in the Roman Arenas, the AUR presents its candidates for the European Parliament, the first round of elections in 2024. Eligible candidates include founding members of the Coalition for the Family, party sponsors, politicians backed by former media mogul Dan Voiculescu, as well as anti-vaccination, nationalist and LGBT lawyers and sociologists.

The leadership of the AUR hopes to take first place in the European Parliament and expects 12-14 parliamentary seats, according to HotNews.ro sources in the party.

Political analysts believe that AUR is likely to take at least second place in next year’s European Parliament elections.

It should be noted that the AUR has been steadily rising in the polls, and recently the party led by George Simion overtook the PNL in the latest INSCOP survey and is in second place among Romanians with 20.1% after the PSD.

The AUR relies on a diaspora electorate, and as George Simion told HotNews.ro earlier this year, half of its membership is outside the country.

• “Our party is half in the country, half abroad, in the diaspora. We do not have a core of local and central administration members like PSD and PNL. We have registered members through cards and dues payers numbering 12,000 in the country and about 9,500 in the diaspora. Among the diaspora, we have the most active members in Great Britain, followed by Italy and Germany,” explains George Simion.

According to George Simion, the Alliance for the Union of Romanians has 12 diaspora organizations and 9,500 active members. AUR members regularly visit large Romanian communities, especially in Italy and Great Britain.

• How PNL and USR lost the “silver bullet” in the battle for the diaspora. Raresh Bohdan: AUR can get about 50% of the diaspora’s votes

According to HotNews.ro sources, the AUR leadership expects to receive 12-14 deputy mandates in the June 2024 elections.

Who are the first 10 candidates recommended by AUR for the respective seats

The AUR list includes the names of controversial figures on the political and social scene of Romania who promote the party’s anti-systemic ideas. Eligible candidates include founding members of the Coalition for the Family, party sponsors, politicians backed by former media mogul Dan Voiculescu, anti-vaccination lawyers, nationalists, LGBT lawyers and sociologists.

The list opens Claudius Tarziu, senator from Bucharest and president of the National Council of Management of AUR. A lawyer by profession, Tarziu was one of the members of the National Coordinating Council of the Family Coalition and co-president of the party. According to his resume, Tarziu is a graduate of the Faculty of Law of the Alexander Ioan Cuza University in Iasi and the Faculty of Communication and Public Relations of SNSPA Bucharest.

It is in second place Mugur Mihescu, former actor, known for his roles as “Garcea” and “Leana” in the series “Vacant Mare”, now a businessman. He joined the AUR in 2022 and is running for a seat in the European Parliament. He entered politics in 2011 with the Green Party and resigned a few months later. He was an honorary adviser to Gabriela Firea when he was mayor of the capital. A businessman who owns two pubs in the old center of Kaptala and runs the Muzica store. During the Covid pandemic, Mihaescu became a spokesperson for those who opposed vaccination. In recent years, Mihaescu began to intervene in political life, giving various speeches related to those who are in charge of the country and how they operate. The former actor signed a bond with Bezpeka on June 2, 1986 and received the conspiratorial name “Mykhay”, reports Ziare.com.

It is in third place Georgiana Maria Teodorescu. He is a lawyer by profession and joined AUR in May 2023. Teodorescu is a lecturer at the Faculty of Law of Titu Mayorescu University and a criminal lawyer, author of legal works on criminal law and criminal procedural law.

Former candidate for the presidency of Romania from the party founded by Dan Voiculescu (PPUSL), Ramona Ioana Brunzel this year joined the AUR and is running for the fourth place for the deputy mandate. Bruynsels was State Counselor for the Business Environment in the office of Prime Minister Viorika Denčile and headed the Directorate for Policy Coordination and Priorities in the government of Mihai Tudos. She graduated from the Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government with a degree in Public Administration Management.

Abraham Son, currently a member of the AUR and a candidate for the European Parliament, was a state secretary in Ludovic Orbán’s government. A former PMP candidate for mayor of Cluj-Napoca in 2020, he is an associate professor at the University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine in Cluj-Napoca.

sociologist Radu Baltasiu is a professor at the University of Bucharest at the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, director of the European Center for Research on Ethnic Issues of the Romanian Academy (since 2007). He received the Dimitrie Gusti Award of the Romanian Academy of Sociology.

Seventh on the AUR list is an anti-LGBT lobbying Baptist lawyer, Petro Kostya. He has practiced and lived in Texas for decades and is one of the “spiritual fathers” of the Family Coalition. According to Pressone.ro, in 2008, with the support of socially conservative organizations in the United States, Costea and his Alliance of Families in Romania (AFR) succeeded in influencing the amendment of the Civil Code to define family as marriage. between a man and a woman. Later, AFR was one of the strongest organizations in the Coalition for the Family, along with PRO VITA.

It’s eight Christian Terhes currently a member of the European Parliament and a member of the AUR. His name is associated with a recent scandal, when three fellow MEPs accused him of making hate speech during a debate on women’s rights held in the European Parliament. Terhesh described transsexual women as “male perverts”.

He said legal recognition of transgender women was the “biggest threat to women” and drew a parallel between men who identify as women and men who identify as machines.

Terhes was elected MEP in 2019 on the PSD list (under Liviu Dragnea) and was promoted by Dan Voiculescu’s INTACT trust.

lawyer George Pieper is ninth on the list. He is a co-author of the payment law and a former honorary advisor to Prime Minister Mihai Tudose in 2017. In recent years, he has been the initiator of large class action lawsuits in Romania filed against commercial banks for abusive commissions introduced in credit contracts. Pieper also became known during the pandemic for his anti-vaccination views.

Sherban Dimitrie Sturdza – an ambiguous personality who has been the honorary consul of Macedonia in Constanta since 2016. He is the great-great-grandson of the ruler of Moldova Mykhailo Sturdza, known for his anti-European speeches. Sturdza is also among the sponsors of the party led by George Simion and ranks tenth in the list of MEPs.

In the 2019 European Parliament elections, 376,925 valid votes were cast in the diaspora. Of these, USR came first with 43.88%, followed by PNL with 31.93%, PMP with 7.92%, and George Simion (independent candidate) with 3.25% over PSD, which recorded 2.41% .

It should be noted that 262,232 votes were actually cast in the 2020 parliamentary elections in the diaspora. In the preferences of Romanians outside the country, USR ranks first with 32%, followed for the first time by PNL-24.9%, AUR with 23%, while PSD registered only 3.37%.