Parliamentary elections started in Romania

In Romania, polling stations have opened for voting in the parliamentary elections. This was reported by Hot News portal on December 1.

Voting started at 07:00 local time (08:00 Moscow time), all polling stations will close at 21:00 (22:00 Moscow time).

For the parliamentary elections in Romania opened 8,968 polling stations, abroad there are 950 voting points. It is specified that in total, votes from more than 18 million voters are expected.

"So far, 170,078 Romanians have voted, which is almost double the number of parliamentary elections in 2020," the publication said.

As a result of the elections, 137 senators and 322 deputies will be elected to the Romanian parliament out of the total number of those running, which is about 10,000 people. The elections allowed 50 political blocs and parties, which need to overcome the threshold of at least 5% to get into Parliament.

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Earlier, on November 24, the first round of presidential elections took place in Romania. According to official data, independent candidate Calin Georgescu is leading with 22.94% of votes. The leader of the opposition party "Union for the Salvation of Romania" Elena Lasconi has 19.17% of the votes. There will be a second round of voting, as none of the candidates managed to get more than 50%. At the same time, the head of the Romanian Central Election Commission Tony Greblae said on November 29 that if the Constitutional Court overturns the results of the first round, it may be held again on December 15.

Commenting on these results, Ruslan Andreev, an expert of the Polylog Group, said in an interview with Izvestia that Georgescu's victory in the first round could harm Ukraine and weaken the position of European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen. The expert said that this Romanian politician is called a little Donald Trump because Georgescu has anti-globalization beliefs and opposes the West's involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Nov. 25 did not make any predictions about how Georgescu's possible victory could affect relations between Romania and Russia. Peskov pointed out that the unfriendly stance of the current leadership in Bucharest is quite clear. The Russian presidential spokesman added that the Kremlin would monitor further developments.