Romanian President Klaus Iohannis resigns in disgrace: A legacy of absence, betrayal, and lust for luxury

Klaus Iohannis is the first president in the past 35 years to leave office through resignation. He will go down in history as one of Romania’s weakest presidents—complacent, disengaged, and primarily concerned with his own comfort. During his first term (2014-2019), he maintained the appearance of a leader committed to keeping Romania aligned with the West, especially as Liviu Dragnea (former PSD leader) and the Social Democratic Party (PSD) waged war on the judiciary.

He participated in the pro-justice protests of January 2017, sparked by the infamous Emergency Ordinance 13 (OUG 13), which aimed to decriminalize certain corruption offenses. Dragnea had hoped to use the ordinance to block his own criminal investigation. In response, Iohannis made an unprecedented move—showing up at Victoria Palace, where Sorin Grindeanu’s government was meeting—to publicly call out the „elephants in the room,” increasing public pressure to withdraw the amnesty and pardon bill that could have saved Dragnea from legal consequences.

However, the illusion of a principled leader crumbled towards the end of Iohannis’s first term, when he caved to PSD’s pressure and dismissed Laura Codruța Kövesi from her position as chief prosecutor of the National Anticorruption Directorate (DNA). Behind closed doors, he even asked Kövesi to resign voluntarily, hoping to avoid the political cost of firing her himself. She refused, unwilling to grant her adversaries that satisfaction.

The downfall of Dragnea, following his conviction in May 2019, also marked the end of Iohannis’s reformist image. From that moment on, his presidency became a long sequence of compromises and abdications of constitutional responsibilities. His re-election in 2019, secured by running against PSD’s then-Prime Minister Viorica Dăncilă, was based almost entirely on an anti-PSD and pro-justice campaign narrative.

A Betrayal of His Voters

But soon after his second term began, his campaign promises disintegrated. Less than a year after its formation, the governing coalition between the National Liberal Party (PNL) and the Save Romania Union (USR) collapsed, triggered by Iohannis’s approval of the justice minister’s dismissal in September 2021. In the name of political stability, Iohannis invited PSD—his former political enemy—back into government.

This betrayal of judicial reforms and the formation of a PSD-PNL coalition was the moment many supporters saw as the ultimate political backstab. Beyond this major compromise, Iohannis withdrew from the public eye, disappearing for weeks at a time. He became more visible on ski slopes, golf courses in Pianu, or relaxing at his seaside retreat in Neptun than in political affairs.

His taste for luxury became evident, as he preferred to travel by private jet even for non-essential trips. The defining image of his early presidency remains the scene where he casually tossed his coat onto a car hood, irritated that his security detail had not given him the attention befitting a monarch.

Iohannis also ensured he had golf courses at his disposal at his official residences in Vila Lac and Neptun. He even attempted to secure the Protocol Villa on Aviatorilor 86 boulevard for his post-presidency comfort, with the state set to invest nearly €9 million in renovations.

His real estate obsession became legendary—during his tenure as mayor of Sibiu (which he governed for nearly 15 years with a so-called „German work ethic”), he amassed around six properties in the city alone.

A Legacy of Political Failures

Iohannis’s political choices were disastrous. He orchestrated the rise of weak, uninspiring leaders within PNL—such as Alina Gorghiu, Florin Cîțu, and Nicolae Ciucă—staging laughable party congresses to ensure that Cotroceni-loyal politicians took control. Under his watch, mediocrity became the defining characteristic of Romania’s political elite. His close and ambiguous relationship with PSD leader Marcel Ciolacu remains puzzling to this day. Despite Ciolacu’s failure to reach the second round of presidential elections and PSD’s worst electoral performance in years, Iohannis still supported his return as prime minister.

During Iohannis’s presidency, the influence of Romania’s intelligence services over politics and governance expanded significantly. The power vacuum left by an absent president and his uninspiring subordinates was quickly filled by others. Since Iohannis showed little interest, and those around him lacked competence, someone had to run the country.

After ten years of the hyperactive “player-president” Traian Băsescu, Romania experienced a full decade of an absentee president. In the country’s political folklore, Iohannis will be remembered as an emperor-like figure—distant, imperious, and allergic to opposition. A man completely devoid of empathy, a taciturn leader who rarely spoke and almost never revealed his true thoughts, even to his closest advisors.

Unlike his predecessors, he granted no interviews—a glaring sign of arrogance and disdain toward the public.

A Mystery to the West, a Disappointment at Home

Externally, Iohannis’s image stands in stark contrast to domestic perceptions. For Brussels and Washington, he was the Eastern European leader who kept Romania aligned with the West, while neighboring countries struggled with democratic backsliding. Yet even for his foreign allies, his bizarre NATO secretary-general candidacy was baffling—an ill-conceived, unilateral move that disrupted diplomatic negotiations. This episode only reinforced his inflated self-perception. Iohannis never had true regional influence; his strengths lay in ceremonial pageantry, titles, and grand but empty gestures.

His political legacy, as his term ends, is the dangerous rise of extremism, populism, and anti-European, anti-NATO political movements. Under his watch, Romania made another grim historical first—the cancellation of presidential elections due to alleged Russian interference. His extended stay at Cotroceni, approved by the Constitutional Court, only fueled public anger, with many considering him an illegitimate president.

Iohannis ultimately announced his resignation under threat of parliamentary suspension and a potential referendum. But more than political pressure, fear of losing the privileges granted to former heads of state may have pushed him to step down.

This is, undoubtedly, a resignation without honor—an abdication by a ruler out of touch with reality, ousted from Cotroceni Palace by public outrage and the populist forces that USR, the party he once sidelined, has now joined. Among Romania’s post-communist presidents—Ion Iliescu, Emil Constantinescu, Traian Băsescu, and Klaus Iohannis—the latter stands apart, not for leadership or reforms, but for his chronic institutional lethargy and absence.

Perhaps, in the end, Klaus Iohannis was the most Balkanized ethnic German Romania has ever seen—a man who mistook the presidency of an entire country for the comfortable mayorship of a small provincial town.