Romanian court to rule on whether presidential election should be rerun

The head of Romania’s election bureau has said the first round of its presidential election could be rerun, as the country’s constitutional court prepared to decide whether the vote, won by a little-known ultranationalist, should be annulled.

Toni Greblă said a rerun of the 24 November ballot could be held on 15 December, with the second round run-off two weeks later. The court, which has already ordered a recount of the vote, meets this afternoon to decide whether to annul it altogether.

Romania’s presidential office said on Thursday that officials had detected online efforts to influence the vote, which was won by Călin Georgescu, a far-right, Moscow-friendly independent who had previously been polling at barely 5%.

The presidency noted “a growing interest” on the part of Russia “to influence the public agenda in Romanian society” and said Georgescu had benefited from “massive exposure due to preferential treatment” by the social media platform TikTok, which it said had not marked the far-right candidate’s content as political.

Georgescu won comfortably after a campaign that he declared had zero budget and was based heavily on viral TikTok videos, reportedly boosted by bot-like activity. He is due to face the centre-right candidate, Elena Lasconi, in an 8 December runoff.

TikTok has dismissed the allegations, saying it enforces guidelines against election misinformation. A spokesperson on Thursday said it was “categorically false” to suggest Georgescu’s account was treated differently from other candidates’.

Georgescu has called for an end to the war in Ukraine, denied the existence of Covid-19, described two second world war-era Romanian fascists as “national heroes” and claimed that in foreign affairs Romania would benefit from “Russian wisdom”.

The court will consider a request to annul the vote filed by a conservative politician, Cristian Terhes, in a case that could further undermine public faith in Romania’s state institutions after judges earlier banned another far-right candidate from running.

Regardless of the decision, parliamentary elections are due to go ahead on Sunday, with both votes seen as critical to the future direction of Romania, hitherto a reliable EU and Nato ally and strategically important to western efforts to back Ukraine.