Romanian president blocks bill criminalising antisemitic hate speech

He argued that, without the legislation, Romania's national plan for combating antisemitism would become ineffectual and should therefore be scrapped.

The president’s actions will "encourage the further promotion of the legionary ideology, of the leaders of extremist organizations, inevitably, of antisemitism and all forms of extremism," Vexler, who sponsored the bill, said in a statement.

The proposed law would introduce prison sentences for the promotion of antisemitism and xenophobia via social media platforms, including by glorifying the Iron Guard Legionnaires – allies of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

“The President’s Office has pushed Romanian Jews into a highly stressful situation," Maximillian Katz, head of Romania’s Center for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, told JNS.

Challenging the legislation puts Romanian Jews in a position where "we need to constantly explain and defend our right to not live with a constant outpouring of hate. Whenever we explain this, a new wave of hatred erupts, and in this case, it’s happening already,” Katz claimed.

On Monday, Dan reportedly defended the decision to challenge the legislation, explaining it was meant to avoid outlawing the honoring of “members of the resistance” to communism who had been part of the fascist, antisemitic Legionnaires movement in the past.

Many in Romania are intensely hostile to its former communist regime which, under Nicolae Ceaușescu, was renowned as one of the most brutal in the Soviet Union.

Ceaușescu was overthrown and executed in the Romanian Revolution of 1989, with far-right elements playing a role on the side of the resistance. As a result, there has long been concern among the country’s Jewish community that fascist groups are among those venerated for their role in the liberation from communism.

The community has also shared fears that Holocaust denial is on the rise in Romania, with some there seeking to downplay the nation’s role in the mass slaughter of Jews.

Indeed, in a 2025 survey commissioned by the Claims Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany in six countries, 53 per cent of young Romanian respondents said that the number of Holocaust victims, six million, was exaggerated, significantly higher than many neighbouring countries.

Romania also had the highest share (28 per cent) of respondents who said fewer than 2 million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust and led in the share of respondents who said the Holocaust was a myth with 7 per cent overall and 15 per cent among young respondents.

In referring the legislation for judicial review, Dan said he supported limiting hate speech but added that the law does not clearly define who is a fascist or a Legionnaire, “leaving room for arbitrariness in the activity of the judicial bodies”.

He added: “Romanian society is strongly polarised, trust in state authorities is at low levels and any action by the state that refers to this polarisation in an unbalanced way increases social tension and distrust in authorities.”