Turnout: 52.42%
About this election
The 2024 European Parliament election in Romania, held on 9 June 2024 alongside local elections, was fought by the two governing parties as a single joint list — an unusual and controversial alliance of the historic rivals, the Social Democrats (PSD) and the National Liberals (PNL). Their "National Coalition for Romania" won 48.55% of the vote and 19 of Romania's 33 seats, a dominant result that masked the underlying fragmentation of Romanian politics. The nationalist Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) came a distant second with 14.93%, while the reformist United Right Alliance, built around the USR, managed only 8.71%, a disappointing showing that foreshadowed the establishment's vulnerability in the presidential contest later that year.
As in every European election, Romania votes as a single nationwide constituency under closed-list proportional representation (d'Hondt method, 5% threshold), so there is no county-level breakdown and this page presents the national result without a regional map. Romania held 33 seats. Combining the European vote with local elections on the same day — a decision pushed by the governing coalition — sharply increased turnout to 52.42% and was widely seen as designed to maximise the mainstream parties' mobilisation advantage.
The PSD–PNL joint list was justified by its architects as a way to project stability and pro-European unity, but critics saw it as an establishment cartel blurring any meaningful choice. Its near-49% gave the coalition 19 MEPs split between the two parties. AUR's 14.93% and 6 seats confirmed the nationalist right's consolidation, while the splintering of the reformist vote — the United Right Alliance on 8.71%, REPER falling short, and the controversial independent Diana Șoșoacă winning a seat — revealed the disarray of the anti-PSD, pro-reform camp. The UDMR and S.O.S. Romania each took two seats.
The comfortable European result lulled the governing coalition into overconfidence months before the presidential election exposed how shallow its support had become. The fragmentation of the reformist vote and the steady rise of AUR visible in June 2024 were harbingers of the November shock, when an outsider topped the presidential first round and the establishment's candidate was eliminated. The European election thus stands as a snapshot of a party system on the brink of the most serious upheaval since 1990.
The decision by the PSD and PNL to contest the 2024 European election on a single joint list was one of the most controversial strategic choices in recent Romanian politics. Governing together in an uneasy coalition, the two historic rivals calculated that a combined ticket would project stability and maximise their seat haul under proportional representation. It succeeded in narrow electoral terms — nearly 49% of the vote and 19 of 33 seats — but at a deeper political cost: by erasing any meaningful distinction between the country's two largest parties, it reinforced the nationalist right's core argument that the entire establishment was a single self-serving cartel. That perception would prove devastating only months later.
Beneath the comfortable headline figure, the June 2024 results contained clear warning signs that the governing parties failed to heed. AUR's consolidation as the unambiguous second force, the fragmentation of the reformist vote across the United Right Alliance and REPER, and the election of the incendiary independent Diana Șoșoacă all pointed to an electorate drifting away from the mainstream and toward anti-system options. Holding the European vote alongside local elections boosted turnout and flattered the coalition's organisational strength, masking the underlying volatility. When that volatility erupted in the presidential first round in November, the establishment was caught completely unprepared.
The 2024 European election laid bare the disarray of the anti-PSD, pro-reform camp that had seemed so ascendant only five years earlier. The forces that had coalesced around USR-PLUS in 2019 had since splintered: the United Right Alliance managed under 9%, the breakaway REPER fell short of a seat, and protest votes leaked to populist and nationalist options, including the lone seat won by the inflammatory independent Diana Șoșoacă. Meanwhile the decision of the two governing parties to merge into a single list removed any clear pro-European alternative to the establishment, leaving disillusioned voters with little to rally behind except the hard right. This combination, a fragmented centre and reformist camp, a self-protective grand coalition, and a rising, unified nationalist bloc, was the precise configuration that would deliver the shock of the presidential first round in November.
The 33 seats Romania returned in 2024 were dominated by the joint PSD-PNL delegation, whose members divided between the Socialists and Democrats and the European People's Party once in Strasbourg, giving Romania substantial weight in both of the parliament's largest groups. AUR's six members aligned with the European hard right, the United Right's three with the liberal and centre-right families, and the UDMR again with the EPP. The lone independent, the firebrand Diana Șoșoacă, sat among the unattached nationalists. The distribution mirrored a country whose mainstream remained firmly pro-European at the institutional level even as an ever-larger share of its electorate was drifting toward the Eurosceptic and nationalist right at home.
Permanent Electoral Authority (Autoritatea Electorală Permanentă) and the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) — roaep.ro.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.