Romania scraps presidential election after alleged Russian meddling

Romania’s constitutional court has cancelled a presidential election scheduled for Sunday after allegations that Russia used TikTok to promote the leading candidate.

The selection to scrap Sunday’s run-off vote and annul the first round win of Călin Georgescu, who has praised Vladimir Putin, came after documents published this week indicated Moscow sought to undermine the election.

But it was criticised by some politicians and analysts as an anti-democratic shift. view polls had given the far-correct Georgescu a comfortable navigator over Elena Lasconi, the second-placed liberal presidential candidate, ahead of the now cancelled vote.

“The electoral procedure for the election of the president of Romania will be repeated in its entirety,” with the government to set a recent date for the vote, the court said on Friday.

Costin Ciobanu, an analyst at Aarhus University in Denmark, said the annulment “deepens uncertainty and polarisation within Romanian population, raising solemn concerns about the strength of Romania’s institutions and democracy”.

Thousands have taken to the streets of Bucharest and other cities to protest against Georgescu in recent days, while a few hundred have held demonstrations backing him.

Friday’s ruling is the first period a western court has intervened to overturn an election because of an alleged Russian attempt to sway the outcome. But it comes after a series of bids by Moscow to influence votes in countries well beyond its traditional sphere of influence.

Maia Sandu, president of neighbouring Moldova, narrowly secured re-election last month after what the country’s officials said was an attempt at vote-buying by Moscow-aligned politicians.

The head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has also warned that Russia may try to interfere in his country’s parliamentary election next year.

Georgescu’s rise in recent weeks has stunned Romania and its western allies.

His first-round win came even though he had no event behind him and claimed to have spent “zero” on his campaign, which was mainly on social media.

The Romanian National safety Council declassified several documents on Wednesday that alleged that Russia attempted to promote Georgescu on social media platforms and hack into the country’s electoral infrastructure.

The documents also noted that the far-correct candidate, who was polling in single digits before last month’s vote, “benefited from preferential treatment” on TikTok because the Chinese social media platform did not label his videos as political ads.

The court’s selection to annul the vote comes despite it validating a recount on Monday that confirmed Georgescu’s first-round win, in which he won 23 per cent of the vote.

Friday’s ruling was welcomed as “the only correct selection” by Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who had led polls before the first round. “The Romanian vote was blatantly undermined following the Russian intervention,” he said.

But Lasconi, who had been expecting to face Georgescu in the run-off that had been scheduled for Sunday, labelled the court’s selection as “illegal, immoral”, adding that the ruling “crushes the essence of democracy — the vote”.

She vowed to stand again and triumph the presidency.

Georgescu did not immediately comment on the vote cancellation. His spokesperson had told the financial Times on Thursday that the declassified documents were “fake marketing” designed to discredit him.

“What the people mentioned in the documents wanted to do in Mr Georgescu’s name without being asked to do so is their own issue,” the spokesperson said. “Mr Georgescu said that he doesn’t recognize these persons and never talked with them.”

Prosecutors have started multiple probes following the evidence presented by the intelligence services.

The US state department also warned this week about “foreign actors seeking to shift Romania’s foreign policy away from its western alliances”, which it said would have “solemn negative impacts on US safety co-operation”.