Romania run-off election

Right-wing extremist Georgescu in Austria for years

Calin Georgescu, his wife Cristela (left) and their two sons lived in Austria for ten years.

(Bild: APA/AP)

The Romanian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, who is regarded as a right-wing extremist, owes his entry into the run-off election primarily to compatriots living abroad. In Austria, the 62-year-old doctor of pedology even received almost 50 percent of the vote. Georgescu also has a strong connection to Austria, having lived with his family in the Alpine republic for ten years. However, his Austrian activities remain largely in the dark.

Entries in the Austrian land register suggest that Georgescu moved from a prefabricated building in Bucharest to Mödling in 2011 and then on to Alland in the district of Baden in 2014. Later, his family - he, his wife Cristela-Elena and two sons - resided in the municipality of Günselsdorf, also in the district of Baden, from 2017 to 2021. 

Calin Georgescu dominated the first round of the presidential election.

(Bild: Associated Press)

However, Georgescu's ties to Austria go back to the time before his move. As early as 2009, the former sustainability expert was listed on the Internet as a board member of the association "The Club of Rome - European Support Center" based in Vienna. Founded at the end of the 1990s, this "European office of the Club of Rome" was intended to promote the eastward expansion of the Club of Rome, which specializes in ecological and economic issues, and to support new chapters (national organizations, note) in Eastern Europe. In 2010, the Romanian, born in 1962, became the honorary chairman of this "European office" in Vienna.

The Austrian association officials involved at the time can no longer remember exactly how Georgescu joined the board. However, a connection with the Romanian "chapter" is obvious, which, according to "Europabüro" co-founder Siegfried Sellitsch, was founded at the time by "boys with blue eyes". "That's what former Securitate employees were called," the retired insurance manager told APA, referring to the Romanian secret service.

Former UN special rapporteur
However, Georgescu's career at the European Support Center did not last long: without giving his Austrian partners any plausible reasons, he had the association in Vienna dissolved in autumn 2013. At the same time, he remained loyal to the Club of Rome - between July 2011 and March 2021, he was a member of the International Secretariat based in Winterthur, Switzerland. Another activity of the Lower Austrian by choice was also related to Switzerland: between 2010 and 2012, he served as UN Special Rapporteur on the effects of environmental pollution on human rights.

Protest against Calin Georgescu, who is depicted as the child of Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin in an altered image of Leonardo Da Vinci's "Madonna and Child".

(Bild: APA/AFP/Daniel MIHAILESCU)

It is unclear how the Georgescus lived in Austria
Although the family acquired properties in Lower Austria worth EUR 530,000 without any mortgage loans when they moved here in 2011 and were later able to sell them on for higher sums in 2014 and 2017, it remains unclear what the Georgescus actually lived on during their ten years in Austria in view of their voluntary work. No other jobs in Austria are known of Calin Georgescu himself and, according to the Foreign Ministry in Vienna, he was never accredited as a diplomat.

According to the news magazine "Profil", his wife at least had a business license as a "human energy practitioner" from August 2019 to March 2021 and offered corresponding services in a joint practice in Schönau an der Triesting. However, the frequent coronavirus lockdowns from spring 2020 onwards are likely to have been detrimental to business. In July 2021, the couple sold their home in Günseldorf and turned their backs on Austria again. 

Mayor has nothing bad to say about Georgescu
"The reason - they told us - for his return was that he couldn't find his feet professionally," said Günselsdorf mayor Alfred Artmäuer. The Georgescus had lived in his immediate vicinity and they had seen each other almost every day, especially in the summer. He couldn't say anything bad about the family, the local politician emphasized. The reclusive Calin Georgescu, who unlike his wife speaks poor German, had never become abusive, had never made anti-Semitic statements or positioned himself as a friend of Russia.

Ex-dictator described as a "hero"
He did this in his home country, writing texts glorifying fascism on several occasions. He described the ex-dictator Ion Antonescu and the fascist Corneliu Zelea Codreanu as "heroes". Georgescu is also considered an admirer of Russian President Vladimir Putin and has already declared that, should he win the election, Romanian aid to Ukraine and the transportation of Ukrainian grain via Romania would be stopped. It is therefore not only in Kiev and Brussels that the run-off election on Sunday is being followed with great concern. The USA has warned of "serious negative consequences" should the country turn away from the West as a result of Georgescu's election.