Organizers Forum International Dialogue in Romania and Bulgaria

Since the collapse of socialism in the 1990s, the shock therapy of reintroducing capitalist economics to many Eastern European countries has starved public services and increased class and social inequalities, providing fertile ground for far-right reaction. I had the opportunity to observe this phenomenon firsthand during the 2025 Organizers Forum trip to Romania and Bulgaria.

We arrived in Bucharest in August 2025 against the backdrop of a recent political crisis. In December 2024, the Romanian presidential election was nullified after far-right front-runner Călin Georgescu was found to have benefited from a sustained Russian interference campaign. Mathematician Nicușor Dan barely beat far-right candidate George Simion in the follow-up election in May 2025. In both elections, far-right nationalist politicians have run Euroskeptic campaigns that play on economic and social anxieties and almost nabbed the Romanian presidency. Twice.

That may spell trouble for the many nonprofit organizations that rely on funding from the European Union. CeRe, one of the organizations we met, is primarily funded by grants from the EU and European foundations. When we asked for their assessment, they seemed sure that the far-right would win the next election.

So too did the representatives we spoke with from Roma for Democracy—the Romanian chapter of the Roma Foundation for Europe. The group said they received funding from their parent foundation, and they try to avoid European grants. But they also told us that other funding that was once distributed by national governments, like Romania’s, has run dry, which is why so many Roma organizations have disappeared.

We learned that the only organizations with a mass membership base are the political parties and the trade unions. We were repeatedly told by those we asked that the political parties were all centrist or right-wing, and all of them corrupt. Even the governing Social Democrats, we were told, are center-right.

The Romanian labor movement also faces challenges. We met with Dumitru Costin, president of the National Trade Union Bloc (BNS), a trade union center with a membership 320,000 strong. He informed us that unionization rates amongst the Romanian workforce have fallen from 90% at the collapse of socialism to roughly 20% today, leaving the vast majority of Romanian workers without a union. Additionally, BNS is the second largest of five trade union centers, suggesting the broader Romanian labor movement is fractured.

If Romania’s political landscape was bleak, Bulgaria’s was worse. Stepping off a bus on a major boulevard in Sofia, I was taken aback by a swastika spray-painted onto a dumpster. Then I saw another. And another! Alongside these were logos of the Bulgarian National Union, a fascist organization, spray-painted onto bus shelters, lampposts, and storefronts up and down the boulevard. Later in our visit, the lead organizer of London ACORN Canada and I ran into a crowd of football hooligans yelling and chanting in the busy Sofia streets, apparently celebrating a football game that just ended… by doing the fascist salute in broad daylight. The right-wing was certainly more visible in Bulgaria.

The groups and individuals we met within Sofia gave us some context that seemed all too familiar to our North American delegation: anti-migrant and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric has been escalating in Bulgaria while the political establishment sits idly by. Avo Levon of Migrant Solidarity Bulgaria told us about actions his group had organized to support immigrants who were detained at the border. Journalists we met with were worried about the slow erosion of freedom of speech. Most chilling was our meeting with Menta Space, a grassroots collective of LGBTQ+ activists. They told us their organization intentionally avoids European grant funding, leaving them reliant on donations and goodwill. One of them was a teacher and told us about increasing restrictions on LGBTQ+ content in the education curriculum. The activists also told us that every queer person in Sofia either has been the victim of a fascist attack or knows someone who has.

I boarded the plane at the Sofia airport for my long trip home with the impression that there is no effective resistance to the rise of fascism in these countries, despite efforts on the ground by progressives. The major political parties are either corrupt or far-right. The labor movement is small and fractured. The community organizations and non-profits doing essential work on the ground can only continue their work as long as grant funding continues to flow from Brussels—funding that is increasingly under threat as anti-European Union attitudes become more mainstream in Romanian and Bulgarian politics.

All of this underscores the importance of mass working-class organizations funded independently by membership dues. We need to grow, nurture, and expand our own self-sufficient organizations that can exercise power and make everyday people feel heard in the decisions that govern their lives. Fascism takes hold when the working class is unable to exercise its own power in response to the crises of capitalism. People are struggling to make rent and put food on the table; in the absence of organizations that are able to connect with them, help them articulate the transformative changes they want to see, and then win those changes, they are more susceptible to right-wing rhetoric that blames society’s problems on the most vulnerable amongst us, instead of the rich capitalists at the top.

All the more reason for us to keep on organizing to build working-class power. We have a world to win.

Ty Riches is the lead organizer of Toronto ACORN.