The atmosphere in Romania in the run-up to the first round of the presidential election does not suggest that these are momentous times. In fact, the general mood is more along the lines of widespread weariness.

Nevertheless, Romania is at a crossroads.

Sunday's poll — a rerun of the election that was annulled last December after the first round — will be one of the most important elections in Romania since the collapse of communism at the end of the 1980s.

The president of Romania does not have many domestic powers — but does have a degree of foreign policy authority and is an influential figure in the country.

Now, for the first time since the overthrow of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in December 1989, a right-wing extremist in the form of former football hooligan George Simion is frontrunner.

His closest rival in the polls, Crin Antonescu, represents the decades-long misery of post-Communist Romanian democracy.

Romania is the most populous country in southeast Europe and the most important EU and NATO member in the region.

It is experiencing the war in Ukraine more immediately than any other EU member state: not only because it shares the EU's longest national border with Ukraine, but also because rockets regularly fly over its territory, Shahed drones have crashed in the Danube Delta, and it faces frequent Russian provocations in the Black Sea.

In view of all this, only one thing is certain in this election: Regardless of the outcome, Romania faces a highly insecure and difficult future.

It seems partly coincidental and partly inevitable that the field of candidates in the election is the way it is.

Last November,

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