The Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the first round of presidential elections

The Constitutional Court of Romania annulled the results of the first round of presidential elections.

This is reported by the Romanian publication Digi24 with reference to sources.

Now the entire election process will be conducted anew. The government should set a new date for presidential elections and a new calendar program for this.

The judges of the Constitutional Court made the decision after an urgent meeting, because the court received many new requests to cancel the presidential elections.

They cited documents declassified by the countryʼs Supreme Defense Council, which said that far-right presidential candidate Celin Georgescu, bypassing national election laws, ran an aggressive advertising campaign and used the algorithms of some platforms, including TikTok, to quickly increase his popularity.

Presidential elections in Romania

The first round of presidential elections in Romania took place on November 24. Far-right politician Celin Georgescu and liberal pro-European candidate Elena Lasconi made it to the second round. Moreover, Lasconi overtook the current Prime Minister of the country Marcel Čolaka by only 2.7 thousand votes.

Georgescuʼs leadership turned out to be unexpected, he was accused of influencing the election through TikTok. Because of this, the European Commission even asked the platform to provide information on how the social network reduced the risk of inauthentic or automated use of its service, as well as to list the risks arising from its system of recommended content.

Romanian intelligence found out that the TikTok account "bogpr" used by Romanian citizen Bohdan Pescir took part in financing Georgescuʼs campaign. He made payments totaling $381 000 between Oct. 24 and Nov. 24 to users of TikTok accounts who were involved in promoting Georgescu.

For more news and in-depth stories from Ukraine please follow us on X.