Political turmoil across Europe escalated this week. On Tuesday, the Romanian prime minister resigned, following the failure of his Social Democrat colleague over the weekend to gain entry into the two candidate run-off for the presidential election. That will be contested by George Simion and Nicosur Dan. Simion, who gained 40% of the votes and is a strong favourite to succeed in the 18 May run-off, is a far-right Eurosceptic. Although conservative, Dan is pro-EU, but only gained half the votes of his opponent.

Romania has the most farmers of any EU country, with 2.8m, over 30% of all farms in the EU, although the average farm size is relatively small, at under 5ha.

As Romania borders Ukraine, it is strategically important. It is also the fourth highest producer of grain in the EU. Its presidential election was held last November, but the result was suspended by the constitutional court amid allegations of Russian interference in favour of the far-right Calin Georgescu, who topped the poll with 22% of the vote. He is backing Simion, they even voted together at the weekend.

It would require all those who didn’t vote for Simion in the first round to coalesce around Dan to prevent his election.

Meanwhile, the German parliament initially failed to elect a chancellor on Tuesday. A second round of voting confirmed Freidrich Merz, who had fallen six votes shy of a majority the first time, as the new German prime minister. Merz, a party colleague of Angela Merkel, will lead a coalition of his centre-right CDU party and the centre-left Social Democratic Party.

However, the fact that a number of coalition backbenchers voted against his candidacy the first time shows how fragile his government is. The far-right AfD made an electoral breakthrough in February’s election, and will lead the opposition in the EU’s most important member state, both politically and economically.