If there’s one thing capable of uniting all Europeans, it’s making political statements with glitter and voting in three of the 27 EU member states on the same day.

The nationalist presidential candidates Slawomir Mentzen and Grzegorz Braun won a combined total of almost 21 per cent of the vote. View on euronews

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Romania is a cornerstone of both the EU and the NATO defense alliance. But the rise of Simion, a self-declared Trumpist who favors cutting military aid to Ukraine, had fueled fears that the country of 19 million could be destabilized if he were elected president — although he took pains to assuage those concerns.

right-wing parties had mixed fortunes in the weekend's elections elsewhere in Europe, making gains in Portugal's parliament but losing out in the first round of Poland's presidential ballot.

If this past weekend in European politics is an indicator of anything, it's that the "Trump effect" is real, and its reverberations are unpredictable.

Citizens in Portugal, Romania, and Poland all cast ballots over the weekend. Two of the elections ended, and there was a major upset in the countries’ balance of power. The third is ongoing and has shown a much tighter margin between candidates than expected.