Politics. Romania, Portugal, Poland... what's at stake on Election Sunday in Europe?

Romanians will elect their president this Sunday in a second round of voting . The Portuguese will elect their deputies in a single round of early parliamentary elections . And the Poles will vote in the first round of the presidential election, with the second scheduled for June 2.

Karol Nawrocki, the conservative (PiS) candidate for the Polish presidential election, had Donald Trump 's name chanted at a rally in Silesia on Tuesday. Joining him was Romanian populist candidate George Simion , who claims his Alliance for the Unity of Romanians (AUR) is "a Trumpist party." He was also present at the US president's inauguration ceremony in January, where he met the presidential candidate of "Chega" ("Enough," the far-right) André Ventura. Nawrocki, for his part, was recently received at the White House.

Thus, Trump appears as the true meeting point of the multiple shades of the far right in Europe, from Giorgia Meloni to Viktor Orban and, to a lesser extent, Jordan Bardella . The heart of the discourse is nationalism, the defense of national interests supposedly endangered by "Brussels." And opposition to the project of growing European integration in the economy and the defense of the new Franco-German tandem Macron-Merz .

The war in Ukraine , along with the issues of financial aid and refugees, dominated the campaigns in Poland and Romania. However, it was almost absent from the campaign in Portugal. There's a simple reason for this: the first two countries share borders with Ukraine, while Lisbon is 4,000 km from Kyiv. Social media may deny space, but geography retains all its rights in politics.

And if Vladimir Putin doesn't spark debate, it's for opposing reasons: the silence on the Portuguese war, the near-unanimity of anti-Russian sentiment among Romanians and Poles. And George Simion is showing in Romania that one can simultaneously speak out against Putin and against aid to Ukraine.

The Portuguese Socialist Party, credited with 25 to 30% of the vote, is expected to come in second behind the right, as it did in 2024, after governing for nearly ten years. And that's not so bad, given the state of the left in the rest of Europe. In Poland, the candidate of Lewica ("Left"), the only party claiming to be left-wing and a partner in Donald Tusk's center-right government, is expected to win 5%. In Romania, it's even simpler, with no candidate truly claiming to be left-wing.

Let us add, in all three countries, the absence of any serious ecological offer. This reflects the impossibility of creating a new left in Central Europe after the end of communism, and the crisis of social democracy in the west of the Union – the two phenomena being undoubtedly linked.