Romanian AUR MP Dan Tanasă sent to trial over message against delivery workers from Asia and Africa
Romania's High Court prosecutor has sent AUR deputy Dan Tanasă to trial for incitement to hatred and discrimination over an August 2025 social media post urging Romanians to refuse orders not delivered by Romanians. AUR calls the prosecution an attack on free speech and says Tanasă criticized a public policy without calling for violence.
Romanian prosecutors have sent AUR deputy Dan Tanasă to trial on charges of incitement to violence, hatred or discrimination, the case prosecutor at the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice announced. The case concerns a social media post published in August last year in which the lawmaker urged Romanians to refuse delivery orders unless they are delivered by Romanians.
According to the indictment, on 19 August 2025 Tanasă publicly incited hatred and discrimination against workers in Romania who come from Asia and Africa, describing them as a category defined by race, nationality, ethnicity and religion. The post, published on a platform accessible to the public, read: «Refuse the order if it is not delivered by a Romanian. Stop encouraging the import of unskilled workers from Asia and Africa. Wake up! A dictatorship never installs itself alone, but amid the applause of the weak-minded. The West is sinking under the Islamist wave, and Europeans are weeping because they were not attentive to the massive import of immigrants. I do not want that in Romania!»
The indictment stresses that acts of discrimination can seriously disrupt relations between citizens because they undermine social relations, which must be based on mutual respect. On parliamentary immunity, prosecutors note that it is limited to political opinions — votes or political opinions expressed in the exercise of the mandate — while deputies and senators can be prosecuted and sent to trial for acts unrelated to votes or political opinions expressed in the exercise of their mandate. The indictment has been forwarded to the High Court of Cassation and Justice, the court competent to hear the case on its merits. Tanasă was sent to trial at liberty.
The Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) reacted with surprise, arguing that the prosecution turns a political position on migration, the labour market and the future of Romanian society into a criminal case for «incitement to hatred and discrimination». In a statement, the party said Tanasă did not call for violence against anyone, did not ask for foreign workers to be attacked and did not urge attacks on persons. It said he criticized a public policy and conveyed, in his own terms, that Romania should not continue importing unskilled workers from outside Europe while millions of Romanians have left the country, wages remain low and the state is unable to bring its own citizens home.
AUR said it will defend Tanasă's right to a fair trial and the right of any parliamentarian to express political opinions, including when they are inconvenient, harsh or contrary to the consensus promoted by the current government. «Freedom of expression does not exist only for opinions approved by the press, the government or prosecutors», the party said, adding that if simple opposition to an immigration policy can become a crime, the question is how much democratic space remains in a state where the prosecutor begins to decide which political opinions elected representatives of citizens are allowed to express.
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