Greater Romania Party

The Greater Romania Party (Romanian: Partidul România Mare, PRM) is a Romanian nationalist political party.[6] Founded in May 1991 by Eugen Barbu and Corneliu Vadim Tudor, it was led by the latter from that point until his death in September 2015.[7][8] The party is sometimes referred to in English as the Great Romania Party.

Greater Romania Party Partidul România Mare
President	Victor Iovici[1]
Founded	1991 (1991)
Headquarters	Bucharest
Membership (2014)	37,000
Ideology	Romanian nationalism Romanian irredentism Right-wing populism National conservatism Soft Euroscepticism[2] Hungarophobia
Political position	Right-wing to far-right[3][4]
Religion	Romanian Orthodoxy
National affiliation	National Identity Bloc in Europe
Colours	Red, Yellow, Blue (Romanian national colours)
Chamber of Deputies	0 / 329
Senate	0 / 136
European Parliament	0 / 32
Mayors	0 / 3,186 [5]
County Councilors	0 / 1,434 [5]
Local Council Councilors	141 / 40,067 [5]
Website
www.romaniamare.org
Politics of Romania Political parties Elections

It briefly participated in government from 1993 to 1995 (in Nicolae Văcăroiu's cabinet). In 2000, Tudor received the second largest number of votes in Romania's presidential elections, partially as a result of protest votes lodged by Romanians frustrated with the fractionalisation and mixed performance of the 1996–2000 Romanian Democratic Convention government. Tudor's second-place position ensured he would compete in the second round run-off against former president and Party of Social Democracy in Romania (PDSR) candidate Ion Iliescu, who won by a large margin. Parallels are often drawn with the situation in France two years later, when far-right Front National Party leader Jean-Marie Le Pen similarly drew the second largest number of votes and was elevated, but defeated, in the presidential run-off against Jacques Chirac.

Although Tudor clearly remained the central figure in the PRM, in March 2005 he briefly stepped down from the party presidency in favour of Corneliu Ciontu. A primary objective of the move was to provide the appearance of a shift toward the political center and to attempt to align PRM with the European People's Party (EPP) bloc in the European Parliament. During this period the PRM also briefly changed its name to the Greater Romania's People Party. EPP, however, rejected the PRM as a potential member. Tudor stated he refused to join the EPP because of its lack of identity. In June 2005, Tudor asserted that he had decided the new leadership had distanced itself from the founding principles of the party, and he sacked the new leadership and reverted the party's name back to simply the "Greater Romania Party". In November 2005, Ciontu, along with a small faction of the PRM, formed their own party, the People's Party, which has since merged with the New Generation Party.

In January 2007, with Romania's accession to the EU România Mare's five MEPs joined a group of far-right parties in the European Parliament that included the French National Front and Austrian Freedom Party, giving them sufficient numbers to form an official bloc, called Identity, Tradition, Sovereignty.[9] Though due to disagreements, they left the group a few months later, causing its collapse.

History and ideology

The party was founded in 1991 by Tudor, who was formerly known as a "court poet" of communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu,[10] and his literary mentor, the writer Eugen Barbu, one year after Tudor launched the România Mare weekly magazine, which remains the most important propaganda tool of the PRM. Tudor subsequently launched a companion daily newspaper called Tricolorul. (The historical expression Greater Romania refers to the idea of recreating the former Kingdom of Romania which existed during the interwar period. Having been the largest entity to bear the name of Romania, the frontiers were marked with the intent of uniting most territories inhabited by ethnic Romanians into a single country; and it is now a rallying cry for Romanian nationalists. Due to internal conditions under Communism after World War II, the expression's use was forbidden in publications until 1990, after the Romanian Revolution.) The party's initial success was partly attributed to the deep rootedness of Ceaușescu's national communism in Romania.[11]

Both the ideology and the main political focus of the Greater Romania Party are reflected in frequently strongly nationalistic articles written by Tudor. The party has called for the outlawing of the ethnic Hungarian party, the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania, for allegedly plotting the secession of Transylvania.[12]

The party has praised and shown nostalgia for both the military dictatorship of Axis ally Ion Antonescu, whom they consider a hero or even a saint,[13][14] and the communist regime of Ceaușescu.[15] The party rejected the 2006 Tismăneanu report on the communist dictatorship in Romania as a manipulation of history.[16]

In 2003, Tudor said he would no longer engage in discourse against Jews and Judaism or deny the Holocaust (see Corneliu Vadim Tudor). He also said that he had become, in his own words, a "philo-Semite". In subsequent months he and some of his supporters travelled to Poland to visit the Auschwitz concentration camp; and, despite strong objections from the family of slain Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and many Jewish organisations,[17] Tudor illegally erected a statue in memory of Rabin in the city of Braşov (for which he was found guilty and fined). During this period, Tudor hired Nati Meir, a Jewish advisor, who ran and won as a PRM candidate for the Romanian Chamber of Deputies. Tudor also hired an Israeli public relations firm, Arad Communications, to run his campaign.[18][19]

Party leaders

Corneliu Vadim Tudor (1991–2015)
Emil Străinu (2015–2016)
Victor Iovici (2017–present)

Electoral history

Legislative elections

Election	Chamber			Senate			Position	Aftermath
	Votes	%	Seats	Votes	%	Seats
1992	424,061	3.89	16 / 341	422,545	3.85	6 / 143	6th	PDSR-PUNR-PRM
1996	545,430	4.46	19 / 343	558,026	4.54	8 / 143	5th	Opposition to CDR-USD-UDMR government
2000	2,112,027	19.48	84 / 345	2,288,483	21.01	37 / 140	2nd	Opposition to PDSR minority government
2004	1,316,751	12.92	48 / 332	1,394,698	13.3	21 / 137	3rd	Opposition to DA-PUR-UDMR (until April 2007)
								Opposition to PNL-UDMR minority government
2008	217,595	3.16	0 / 334	245,930	3.57	0 / 137	5th	Extra-parliamentary opposition to PDL-PSD government (until December 2009)
								Extra-parliamentary opposition to PDL-UNPR-UDMR (until May 2012)
								Extra-parliamentary support to USL government (until December 2012)
2012	92,382	1.25	0 / 412	109,142	1.47	0 / 176	5th	Extra-parliamentary support to USL government (until March 2014)
								Extra-parliamentary opposition to PSD-UNPR-UDMR-PC government (until December 2014)
								Extra-parliamentary support to PSD-UNPR-ALDE government (until November 2015)
								Extra-parliamentary opposition to Cioloș Cabinet (Ind.)
2016	73,264	1.04	0 / 329	83,568	1.18	0 / 136	8th	Extra-parliamentary opposition to PSD-ALDE government (until August 2019)
								Extra-parliamentary support to PSD minority government (until November 2019)
								Extra-parliamentary support to PNL minority government

Presidential elections

Election	Candidate	First round			Second round
		Votes	Percentage	Position	Votes	Percentage	Position
1992	did not compete
1996	Corneliu Vadim Tudor	597,508	4.7%	5th
2000	Corneliu Vadim Tudor	3,178,293	28.3%	2nd	3,324,247	33.2%	2nd
2004	Corneliu Vadim Tudor	1,313,714	12.6%	3rd
2009	Corneliu Vadim Tudor	540,380	5.56%	4th
2014	Corneliu Vadim Tudor	349,416	3.68%	7th
2019	did not compete

European elections

Election	Votes	Percentage	MEPs	Position	EU Party	EP Group
2007	212,596	4.15%	0 / 32	7th	—	—
2009	419,094	8.65%	2 / 33	5th ^1	—	NI
2014	150,484	2.70%	0 / 32	8th	—	—
2019	did not compete

Notes:

¹ PNG-CD competed on PRM ballot, thus gaining 1 MEP.

References

1. "Partidul "România Mare" are o nouă conducere. Ce funcție ocupă fiica lui Vadim" [PRM has elected a new president.]. b1.ro (in Romanian). 13 November 2017.
2. . 13 July 2018 http://www.monitorulcj.ro/politica-administratie/64984-prm-vrea-sa-ob%C5%A3ina-13-la-viitoarele-alegeri-la-nivel-na%C5%A3ional-#sthash.R2U6vEm5.dpbs. Missing or empty |title= (help)
3. "Strategiile PRM de maximizare a capitalului electoral (1996-2005)". Retrieved 16 December 2014.
4. "The Ideological Institutionalization of the Romanian Party System". Retrieved 16 December 2014.
5. http://www.2016bec.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/SIAL2016_Situatia_mandatelor_partide-2.xlsx
6. Janusz Bugajski (1995). Ethnic Politics in Eastern Europe: A Guide to Nationality Policies, Organizations, and Parties. M.E. Sharpe. p. 466. ISBN 978-0-7656-1911-2.
7. Alison Mutler (14 September 2015). "Corneliu Vadim Tudor, ultranationalist Romanian poet and politician, dies at 65". The Washington Post. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
8. Alina Novăceanu (14 September 2015). "Corneliu Vadim Tudor, de la PCR la PRM, candidat de cinci ori la președinție". Mediafax. Retrieved 16 September 2015.
9. Traynor, Ian (January 8, 2007). "Romania's first gift to the European Union - a caucus of neo-fascists and Holocaust deniers". The Guardian.
10. Verbeeck, Georgi; Hausleitner, Mariana (2011), "Cultural Memory and Legal Responses: Holocaust Denial in Belgium and Romania", Facing the Catastrophe: Jews and Non-Jews in Europe During World War II, Berg, p. 238
11. Shafir, Michael (2004), "Memories, Memorials and Membership: Romanian Utilitarian Anti-Semitism and Marshal Antonescu", Romania Since 1989: Politics, Economics, and Society, Lexington Books, p. 71
12. Cinpoeș, Radu. "The Extreme Right in Contemporary Romania" (p. 5) October 2002. Accessed July 31, 2014.
13. Shafir, Michael (2012), "Denying the Shoah in Post-Communist Eastern Europe", Holocaust Denial: The Politics of Perfidy, de Gruyter, p. 33
14. Gruber, Ruth Ellen (2002), "East-Central Europe", American Jewish Year Book 2002, American Jewish Committee, p. 471
15. Bugajski, Janusz (2000), "Nationalist Majority Parties: The Anatomy of Ethnic Domination in Central and Eastern Europe", The Politics of National Minority Participation in Post-Communist Europe, EastWest Institute, p. 75
16. Hogea, Alina, "Coming to Terms with the Communist Past in Romania: An Analysis of the Political and Media Discourse Concerning the Tismăneanu Report", Studies of Transition States and Societies, 2 (2): 22–23
17. "Dedication of Romanian Statue of Rabin a Ploy". Anti-Defamation League. January 16, 2004. Archived from the original on June 2, 2006. Retrieved March 3, 2006.
18. "Yad Vashem has issued the following statement regarding the business relationship between Israeli public relations entrepreneur Eyal Arad and the leader of the Greater Romania party, Vadim Tudor". Yad Vashem. March 14, 2004.
19. "APPEAL". The Romanian Jewish Community.

External links

• (in Romanian) Greater Romania Party
• (in Romanian) România Mare (magazine)
• (in Romanian) Tricolorul (magazine)