The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday rejected an appeal to overturn a Romanian court’s recent decision to annul a presidential election in which a political outsider had emerged as the frontrunner. In its ruling, the ECHR said the appeal, filed by presidential candidate Calin Georgescu, fell outside its jurisdiction.
For some establishment figures within Europe, it was a victory in what they see as a long-running battle for democracy. However, with Romania gearing up for an election re-run in the spring, some observers maintain that the Romanian court decision was a blatant example of what is now commonly referred to as “lawfare.”
In December 2024, Romania’s Constitutional Court annulled the first-round results of a presidential poll in which Georgescu secured the highest number of votes.
In justification for the decision, the court cited alleged violations, while Romania’s security authorities accused Russia of having meddled in the electoral process.
At the time, Romanian Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu voiced support for the move, calling it the “only correct solution.”
Frank Furedi, executive director of MCC Brussels, a Belgium-based think tank that is frequently critical of EU policy, said he saw it as “an internal coup.”
“It’s very much an expression of the politicization of the judiciary, where the courts are used as a political weapon to isolate opponents,” Furedi told The Epoch Times.
Cem Karadeli, a Turkish political analyst and a professor of international relations at Ankara’s Ufuk University, agreed.
“Romania had a very interesting populist candidate who was likely to win the elections,” Karadeli told The Epoch Times. “But then we saw that it was prevented by the country’s Supreme Court. It looked very much like direct intervention by the European Union”
Others have taken the opposite view, stressing the court’s constitutional duty to safeguard elections from malign foreign influences.
She said the Constitutional Court “unanimously made the decision on the basis of Article 146 (f) of the Constitution concerning the legality and correctness of the presidential electoral process.”
Elections Called Off
Often described by Western media as far-right, Georgescu surprised Europe’s political establishment on Nov. 24 when he won 23 percent of the vote in the first round of presidential elections.The result contradicted earlier opinion surveys that had put his support among Romanian voters at less than 10 percent.
Georgescu opposes unqualified Western support for Ukraine’s war effort. He is also critical of NATO, which Romania joined in 2004, three years before the country joined the European Union (EU).
In the election’s first round, Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union, a pro-EU centrist political party, came in second, clinching 19 percent of the vote.
The two frontrunners were meant to face off in a second-round vote slated for Dec. 8, but the runoff election never materialized.
Two days before the scheduled poll, Romania’s Constitutional Court, in an unprecedented move, called off the entire election and annulled the first-round vote results.
Citing alleged poll violations, the Romanian authorities said that Russia had interfered in the electoral process, while also accusing Georgescu’s campaign of illegally using digital technologies to boost his popular support.
According to the Romanian authorities, Georgescu was given preferential treatment at the expense of other candidates by the Chinese-owned social media platform.
He was also accused of relying on undeclared sources of funding to finance his electoral campaign.
The Constitutional Court based its decision on five documents that were declassified by Romania’s Security Council, which alleged that Russia had interfered in the poll and provided little evidence of direct involvement.
After reviewing confidential data provided by Romania’s foreign intelligence service, a parliamentary committee said it agreed that cyberattacks and misinformation had been used to boost certain candidates.
“It’s a long way from knowing the danger exists to finding concrete evidence of what happened,” Klaus Iohannis, Romania’s outgoing president, said in mid-December.
“Don’t imagine these attacks are signed, ‘With love, from the East,’” he told reporters in Brussels. “No, they are very hard to document. We must find concrete instruments, correct procedures to be able to defend ourselves from these attacks.”
Some are skeptical as so far no evidence has been made public to support the claims against Georgescu or his campaign.
“They haven’t been able to come up with any evidence whatsoever. Nobody has argued that there was cheating at the polls or that people were forced to vote one way or the other,” Furedi said. “Everybody was very clear about who they were voting for. They were voting against the [political] establishment.”
Karadeli also voiced skepticism about Romanian authorities’ allegations.
“Those who claim there was [Russian] interference are the ones on whom the burden of proof rests. And I don’t feel satisfied with the explanation they came up with,” he said.
Moscow rejects claims that it interfered in the election, while TikTok has likewise denied allegations that its algorithms gave Georgescu an unfair advantage.
According to Agachi, the court’s decision to cancel the poll was based on “rapidly developing information concerning state-sponsored interference in the electoral process and Russian hybrid activities, as well as accusations of campaign finance violations.”
“The court made its decision stating that … one candidate skirted the law in his campaign and benefited from unfair promotion,” Agachi said.
Washington Weighs In
Shortly before the election was canceled, Washington voiced its concern over allegations of Russian involvement in “malign cyber activity designed to influence the integrity of the Romanian electoral process.”“Romania’s hard-earned progress anchoring itself in the transatlantic community cannot be turned back by foreign actors seeking to shift Romania’s foreign policy away from its Western alliances,” Miller said. “Any such change would have serious negative impacts on U.S. security cooperation with Romania.”
Furedi compared the situation to U.S. President Donald Trump’s first-term electoral win in 2016, which was overshadowed by what he described as a “fantasy about Russian intervention” in the U.S. electoral process.
He said the situation was similar to that when a majority of British voters opted to leave the EU earlier the same year.
“When the people voted in favor of Brexit, there was all this talk about foreign intervention,” Furedi said.
According to Furedi, similar questions were raised in the nation of Georgia after that country’s ruling party—accused by critics of being pro-Russian—won a parliamentary poll last October.
Karadeli said Central Europe and the Caucasus region—in which Georgia is located—are currently riven by what he described as a “political dichotomy.”
“On the one hand,” he said, “there’s a globalist element that takes a global approach to economics and politics, such as getting rid of national borders.”
“On the other hand, we have populist candidates who are against all these things. What happened in Romania is an example of competition between these two forces.”
Rerun Planned Despite Protests
Romania’s ruling coalition has since announced plans to hold a fresh first-round election on May 4. If no candidate wins an outright majority, this will be followed by a runoff vote two weeks later.It remains unclear whether Georgescu, 62, will be allowed to take part in the new round of elections.
Until then, Iohannis, whose term officially ended one month ago, is set to remain in office.
After the first-round results were annulled last month, Iohannis said in a social media post that he had raised the issue with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
On Jan. 16, Romania’s ruling coalition tightened campaign restrictions pertaining to large social media platforms, including TikTok.
Under the new regulations, these platforms will have to remove any content deemed in violation of electoral rules within five hours, if requested to do so by Romanian election officials.
Last week, tens of thousands of people took to the streets of Bucharest to protest the called-off election and demand that the first-round results be reinstated.
“We demand a return to democracy through the resumption of elections, starting with the [canceled] second round,” George Simion, leader of the right-leaning Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, told reporters at the Jan. 12 protest.
Calling the court decision a coup d’état, Simion, whose party organized the demonstration, said, “We are sorry to discover so late that we were living in a lie and that we were led by people who claimed to be democrats, but are not at all.”
Furedi said the possibility for the court to reverse its decision is slim.
“I don’t see the courts going back on this [decision], because that would represent an acknowledgment of what they have done,” he said. “That would create a crisis that they’re not prepared to countenance.”
EU: We’ll Do It in Germany
Earlier this month, Thierry Breton, former EU digital policy czar, warned of potential foreign interference in German federal elections slated for next month.“Let’s keep calm and enforce our [digital and social media] laws in Europe when they are at risk of being circumvented,” he said in broadcast remarks. “We did it in Romania and we will obviously do it if necessary in Germany.”
Some observers saw Breton’s remarks as a threat that the EU could cancel the German election if it was won by the right-leaning Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
“It’s an explicit acknowledgment of the fact that you can expect lawfare becoming much more actively used by the European elites, particularly those that support the EU Commission,” Furedi said. “They will do their best to prevent a swing to the right [in Europe], what they call the ‘populist parties.’”
Asked if the United States would endorse such tactics under Trump, who returned to the White House on Jan. 20, Furedi said, “I think Trump has a more sovereigntist political orientation. This isn’t to say he won’t pursue foreign policies in ways that contradict those of other nations, but Trump understands the importance of upholding the basic principle of national and popular sovereignty.”
