Supreme Court decides
Presidential elections in Romania must be repeated

December 6, 2024, 2:14 p.m

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At the end of November, a pro-Kremlin candidate won the most votes in the first round of Romania’s presidential election. But shortly before the decisive runoff election, the country’s highest court intervened. The judges decide that the ballot must be repeated in its entirety.

The presidential election in Romania must be completely repeated. This was decided by the country’s highest court. A runoff election between two candidates should have taken place there on Sunday. The right-wing extremist and pro-Kremlin candidate for president in Romania, Calin Georgescu, planned to stop all aid to Ukraine, which is under attack by Russia, if he wins the election. The conservative-liberal reform politician Elena Lasconi would have run against him.

The judges based this on revelations by the Romanian secret service that the country had been the target of an “aggressive Russian hybrid attack”. The right-wing extremist and pro-Russian presidential candidate Calin Georgescu was massively promoted via the TikTok app, which is particularly popular among young people, with the help of coordinated accounts, recommendation algorithms and paid advertising.

Georgescu surprisingly won the first round of presidential elections in the EU and NATO country at the end of November, after previously only achieving single-digit polls. In the first round of the presidential election on November 24th, 22.94 percent of voters chose Georgescu and 19.18 percent for Lasconi. Marcel Ciolacu, who entered the race as the incumbent head of government and was the clear favorite based on the polls, failed to make it into the runoff election. Ciolacu’s Social Democratic Party has dominated Romanian politics for the past 30 years, but its years in power were marred by several corruption scandals.

Right-wing extremist parties, which often have sympathy for Russia, also did well in the Romanian parliamentary election last Sunday. The President of the Romanian Republic has primarily protocol-related tasks. But he is a moral authority in the country – and has influence on foreign policy. He also plays a key role in the formation of new governments.