Gabriela Ciot, a professor at the Faculty of International Relations of Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca and a former state secretary in Romania's foreign ministry, told Adevărul that Bulgaria's presidential election could erode regional strategic reliability and reopen the risk of a European blockage affecting Romania.
She said a victory for Iliana Iotova, allied with Prime Minister Rumen Radev, would strengthen the political camp aligned with Radev in both the presidency and the executive in Sofia. Analysts at the Polish Institute of International Affairs have described that outcome as an unprecedented concentration of power with pro-Russian leanings in a NATO and EU member on the Black Sea. Ciot noted that Bulgaria under Radev has continued to cooperate on joint NATO requests and has recorded a proposal for a moratorium on drone attacks in the Black Sea. Romania's main concern, she said, is whether Sofia remains a reliable partner.
Romania's foreign policy, she added, already saw in Bulgaria's 2021–2022 veto of EU accession talks with North Macedonia and Albania how Sofia can block files in the European Council. An Iotova presidency aligned with Radev's government could give Sofia one institutional voice and similar blocking positions on files important to Romania, from multiannual EU budget allocations for the Black Sea to the pace at which security infrastructure becomes operational.
Ciot said the sharper danger for Bucharest would be strategic delay. She pointed to Radev's handling of the drone crisis. A European Parliament resolution of 22 October 2026 explicitly criticised the Bulgarian government's ambiguous management of the Russian threat and Sofia's weak diplomatic response to Russia. She said an aligned Iotova presidency would remove the last institutional check on that tendency. Bilateral projects could continue on paper while their pace, political ambition and readiness to name Russia as a threat diminished. In that setting, Romania could add redundancy to its Black Sea partnerships by deepening ties with Turkey and using formats that do not require Bulgarian political support.
On the Eastern Flank, Ciot argued that the risk for Romania would be a gradual dilution of coherence. Bucharest has positioned itself as NATO's anchor in the Black Sea region, spending more on defence than Bulgaria, hosting multinational formations and leading a dedicated Black Sea approach in both NATO and the EU. If Bulgaria's commitment to identifying and countering Russia became conditional or rhetorical, Romania's role would be more important and more exposed. She recalled that Radev acknowledged that logic indicated Russian responsibility in the drone crisis but refused a formal attribution, leaving Romania to carry a disproportionate share of the political burden.
The Hungary–Serbia–Bulgaria line, she said, is considerably less cohesive than six months ago and may be dissolving. Hungary's political landscape changed after the fall of Viktor Orbán's government, and the new administration in Budapest has signalled a different course, dropping the systematic EU vetoes on Ukraine-related files that shaped Hungarian foreign policy for more than a decade. A similar recalibration is under way in Serbia. President Aleksandar Vučić remains in office but is increasingly constrained by a government expected to set a more Euro-Atlantic course, and he can no longer impose his equidistant line with his former authority. Bulgaria could become the last ambivalent point in what was a three-capital arc of resistance to the Western consensus on Russia. For Romania, Ciot said, the strategic calculation has improved: instead of an arc of ambivalence that slowed NATO's adaptation to the Black Sea, Bucharest could face a more isolated Sofia, a subtler challenge that is easier to manage if Romanian diplomacy uses the change of momentum in Budapest and Belgrade before Bulgaria's own course hardens.
A second-round victory for Andrei Gyurov remains within reach after a first-round gap of 2.8 percentage points, smaller than polls that had projected an overwhelming win for Iotova. Ciot said that would produce cohabitation. Bulgaria's president has mostly ceremonial and external-representation powers, but can send legislation back for reconsideration, refer laws to the Constitutional Court, convene the Consultative Council for National Security, represent the state at European Council summits and appoint ambassadors. Gyurov could use the consultative council, the format Iotova convened after the October 2026 drone attacks, to press for a clearer attribution of Black Sea attacks to Russia and to challenge the government in public, drawing on the European Parliament's criticism. As a former caretaker prime minister who met NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte and signed a security pact for Ukraine in Kyiv, he would bring personal diplomatic capital.
The structural limits would remain severe. Radev's parliamentary majority of about 131 seats in the 240-seat National Assembly can override presidential vetoes and set the political agenda, so a Gyurov presidency would function as institutionalised opposition inside the state. For Romania, Ciot said, that result would preserve a presidential interlocutor who shares Bucharest's threat assessment, could coordinate messages at European Council and NATO summits, and could warn early when Radev's government considers decisions harmful to regional security. In the current Black Sea escalation, she said, a head of state who consistently affirms a Euro-Atlantic orientation would matter for alliance politics.
She described the Black Sea mine countermeasures task group as one of the region's most successful security formats, with ten completed activations under rotating Turkish-Romanian-Bulgarian command. A Bulgarian shift toward equidistance would undermine the framework but would be unlikely to break it, because the mine threat is physical and indiscriminate and directly endangers Bulgarian coastal and maritime communities. The larger risk would be minimal involvement: Sofia contributing the least possible resources, resisting information-sharing protocols that could implicate Russia, or blocking integration into wider NATO maritime domain awareness. An October 2026 intervention by Defence Minister Stoyanov, attributing Black Sea attacks to both parties in the conflict, Russia and Ukraine, signalled technical participation that undercuts the strategic narrative.
For critical undersea infrastructure, including submarine cables, energy pipelines and the jointly hosted EU Maritime Security Centre, a less engaged Bulgaria would be more worrying. Sofia could quietly resist surveillance missions able to detect Russian hybrid operations without formally leaving any agreement. Ciot said Bucharest and Ankara should follow a dual approach: deepen Turkish-Romanian naval cooperation enough for mine countermeasures and infrastructure protection to function with reduced Bulgarian enthusiasm, including the planned NATO initiative Black Sea Sentry, and keep diplomatic engagement with Sofia on the basis that cooperation is a practical necessity.
She distinguished overlapping versions of Sofia's drone moratorium. Iotova's wording is a comprehensive moratorium on all military hostilities involving all six Black Sea littoral states, including Russia. Radev's narrower version, presented at the European Council in October and developed with Romania, focuses on drone attacks against civilian ships. Ciot said the confusion hides a basic question: whether Russia should be treated as a negotiating partner in arrangements covering activities for which the European Parliament considers it directly responsible. A framework that places the aggressor and the affected parties on an equal footing risks a false symmetry that dilutes responsibility and complicates allied consensus. Romanian diplomacy, she said, can credibly support the narrower civilian-protection moratorium it co-authored, keep a clear distance from the broader wording, and anchor future talks on maritime security and critical infrastructure in established NATO and EU channels.
The Black Sea Maritime Security Hub, hosted jointly in Constanța and Varna and designed as the operational arm of the EU's 2025 Strategic Approach for the Black Sea, is at a critical funding point linked to the next multiannual financial framework. The October European Parliament resolution asks that unspent funds from the SAFE instrument be directed to Black Sea challenges, but the centre depends on sustained support from both Bucharest and Sofia. An Iotova victory would carry the risk that a presidency aligned with Radev reduces the emphasis on the centre's security-surveillance functions, favours more flexible mandates, or shifts Bulgaria's position in EU budget talks. A Gyurov presidency would add a complementary voice in the European Council pressing for maximum ambition. Ciot said Romania should push operationalisation at full speed regardless of the election and secure pilot-project funding through existing EU instruments.
Prolonged political instability in Bulgaria, with eight election cycles in five years, has already delayed cross-border connectivity. Fast Danube has stalled for lack of Bulgarian environmental studies, and the second Ruse–Giurgiu bridge remains at the feasibility stage despite talks. A stable Radev government might accelerate some projects, but competing priorities, including adoption of the euro, could absorb the room needed for sustained technical work. A possible turn back toward Russian gas imports would undermine the case for joint Black Sea energy infrastructure. Romania can limit the impact through tools that depend less on bilateral political will, including the Connecting Europe Facility and military-mobility co-financing, and by diversifying connectivity on a north–south axis with Greece.
A cohesive Romanian-Bulgarian voting bloc in the European Parliament has always been more an aspiration than a reality. The two delegations sit in different political groups, and coordination has been ad hoc. On Black Sea security files, objective interests converge around shared drone threats, the joint maritime security centre and multiannual budget needs, which can sustain cooperation despite presidential divergence. Where Radev's line differs, on the degree of confrontation with Russia and on setting a moratorium, Bulgarian MEPs aligned with the government could break with their Romanian counterparts. The October resolution passed by 432 votes to 52, which Ciot cited as evidence that the Black Sea security narrative now extends well beyond the region's own representatives.
On party links, Ciot said the natural ideological partner of Romania's Social Democratic Party in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and member of the Party of European Socialists, was effectively removed from government when it failed to enter parliament in April 2026. Radev's Progressive Bulgaria absorbed the socialist electorate without inheriting its institutional ties to European social-democratic networks. Political pragmatism can still be the link, including a shared institutional interest in cross-border infrastructure. The bilateral agenda, from the Maritime Security Centre to the Danube bridges and energy corridors, is dense enough to sustain cooperation.