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Romania’s top court has annulled the results of the first round of the presidential election and says the process must be rerun after allegations that Russia ran a coordinated campaign to promote the far-right candidate who emerged as the frontrunner.
The Constitutional Court’s decision on Friday, which is final, came after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence this week that alleged Romania was the target of “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks” during the election period.
The alleged effort included thousands of social media accounts that promoted far-right populist Calin Georgescu across platforms such as TikTok and Telegram.
The court has decided “to annul the entire electoral process for the election of the President of Romania … to ensure the correctness and legality of the electoral process”, it said in Friday’s decision.
Georgescu, a pro-Russian candidate who wants to end Romania’s support for Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion, emerged as the frontrunner in the first-round vote on November 24 despite being a political outsider who declared zero campaign spending.
He was due to face pro-European Union centrist Elena Lasconi of the Save Romania Union party in a run-off on Sunday. Voting is already underway in polling stations abroad.
Lasconi condemned the ruling on Friday, saying “The constitutional court’s decision is illegal, amoral, and crushes the very essence of democracy: voting”.
George Simion, leader of the opposition hard-right Alliance for Uniting Romanians (AUR), called the decision a “coup d’etat”.
“Nine politically appointed judges scared that a candidate outside the system had all chances to become Romania’s president, decided to annul Romanians’ will,” Simion added.
But Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu expressed support for the court’s ruling, saying it was “the only correct decision” after the declassified documents showed alleged Russian interference.
The intelligence files released on Wednesday were from the Romanian Intelligence Service, the Foreign Intelligence Service, the Special Telecommunication Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
In light of their release, the Constitutional Court received multiple legal complaints urging it to annul the first-round vote, but it is not clear yet on what grounds it made the decision.
A new date will now be set to rerun the first round.
