Latest news with #CălinGeorgescu
Euronews
27-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Romania's Călin Georgescu announces withdrawal from politics
Călin Georgescu, the controversial populist whose bid for Romania's presidency last year resulted in the annulment of an election in the European Union and NATO member country, has announced he is stepping away from political life. Georgescu upended Romania's political landscape last November when he ran as an independent and unexpectedly surged to frontrunner in the first round of the presidential election, going from an obscure candidate to beating the incumbent prime minister. "I choose to be a passive observer of public and social life," the 63-year-old said in a video posted online late on Monday. "I choose to remain outside any political party structure … I am not affiliated with any political group in any way." Despite denying any wrongdoing, Georgescu was barred from the tense election rerun held in May, won by pro-EU candidate Nicușor Dan, who was officially sworn in on Monday. Dan, a mathematician and former Bucharest mayor, beat the hard-right nationalist George Simion, who became Georgescu's nominal successor. Georgescu said he made his decision to take a step back following the conclusion of the presidential race, which for him indicated "the sovereignist movement has come to a close." "Even though this political chapter has ended, I am convinced that the values and ideals we fought for together remain steadfast," he said. "My dear ones, I have always said that we would make history, not politics." The outcome of Georgescu's success in last year's chaotic election cycle sent shockwaves through Romania's political establishment. It also left many observers wondering how most local surveys had put him behind at least five other candidates. Despite what appeared to be a sprawling social media campaign promoting him, Georgescu had declared zero campaign spending. A top Romanian court then made the unprecedented move to annul the election after allegations emerged of electoral violations and Russian interference. In February, prosecutors opened criminal proceedings against Georgescu, accusing him of incitement to undermine the constitutional order, election campaign funding abuses, and founding or supporting fascist, racist, xenophobic, or antisemitic organisations, among other charges. On Tuesday, he was due to appear at the prosecutor's office in Bucharest. Once a member of Simion's hard-right Alliance for the Unity of Romanians, Georgescu left the party in 2022 after a period of infighting. He was accused by colleagues of being pro-Russian and critical of NATO, the US-led military alliance to which Romania belongs. He sparked controversy for describing Romanian fascist and nationalist leaders from the 1930s and 1940s as national heroes. He has also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin in the past as "a man who loves his country" and has questioned Ukraine's statehood, but he claims not to be pro-Russian. After Romania's decision to cancel the election last year, Georgescu became a cause célèbre among nationalists, with support coming from figures such as US Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk, who both criticised Romania for annulling the vote. Georgescu has argued the election was "cancelled illegally and unconstitutionally," and after he was barred from the May rerun, he accused authorities of "inventing evidence to justify the theft" of the elections. Earlier this year, thousands of protesters took to the streets of Bucharest in a show of support for Georgescu, who cemented his status as a persecuted anti-system candidate, railing against a corrupt political class. "I deeply understand what many of you have gone through: you suffered, you were harassed, humiliated, wronged, and marginalised," Georgescu said on Monday, adding he might return to politics "if a serious opportunity arises that could bring real benefits to Romania and the Romanian people."
The Guardian
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Defeated Romanian ultranationalist says he will ask court to annul presidential election
The defeated ultranationalist candidate in Romania's presidential election rerun has said he will ask the country's top court to annul the vote on the same grounds – foreign interference – that led to the original ballot being cancelled last year. George Simion, who was defeated in Sunday's runoff by the liberal mayor of Bucharest, Nicuşor Dan, said on Tuesday he would ask the constitutional court to void the ballot 'for the same reasons they annulled the elections' last year. The election, which Dan won by a margin of 53.6% to 46.4%, was the second time the vote had been held. The first, last November, was cancelled by the court after the first round amid allegations of campaign financing violations and a 'massive' Russian interference campaign. The winner of the annulled vote, far-right firebrand Călin Georgescu, was barred from standing again and is under formal investigation on counts including misreporting campaign spending, illegal use of digital technology and promoting fascist groups. He denies any wrongdoing. 'Just as Călin Georgescu was removed and the elections were annulled, we will challenge the election of Nicușor Dan for exactly the same reasons,' Simion, an EU-critical, Trump-admiring former soccer ultra, said in a statement to local media. 'Why? Because there was vote buying,' said Simion, who formally conceded to Dan on Sunday night after first claiming to have won. 'Because dead people voted on 18 May, and no calculation in the world can show us over 11.5 million Romanians voted.' Simion has repeatedly alleged electoral fraud without providing evidence. His belated decision to contest the election's outcome, while unlikely to succeed, will prolong the political uncertainty in Romania, which is under caretaker government. The ultranationalist, whose supporters carried out a parallel count at some polling stations, said votes were 'correctly counted' but 'international observers' had seen 'foreign interference' and 'social media and algorithms have been manipulated'. He claimed there was 'irrefutable evidence' of meddling by France, Moldova and others in 'an orchestrated effort to manipulate institutions, direct media narratives and impose a result that does not reflect the sovereign will of the Romanian people'. Simion referenced a suggestion by the founder of the Telegram messaging app, Pavel Durov, that Paris had asked it to 'silence conservative voices' in Romania. France has 'categorically rejected' what it called 'completely unfounded allegations'. Sign up to Headlines Europe A digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week day after newsletter promotion Russian-born Durov, who also has French nationality, is being investigated by France in connection with alleged criminal activity on the app, including child abuse images and drug trafficking. Telegram has said it abides by EU law and denies the platform facilitates illegal activities. The far-right candidate said he had congratulated Dan on election night because 'I love Romania, the Romanian people, and I never want to see bloodshed.' The count may have been correct, he said, 'but before and during it, there was manipulation'. He acknowledged there was 'little chance that my request to the court will pass', but said he was 'appealing to all Romanians of good faith to … demand the cancellation of this masquerade'. He would provide those who wished with a template, he said.
Euronews
04-05-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Romania votes again, but where is Călin Georgescu?
ADVERTISEMENT Around six months ago, the nationalist pro-Russian candidate Călin Georgescu came out of nowhere to win the first round of the country's presidential elections, boosted by an unprecedented TikTok campaign. However, 48 hours before the second round was set to be held, the results were annulled over concerns about his campaign and potential Russian interference. As a result, Romanians will cast their votes again this Sunday. We spoke with Euronews' Bucharest bureau chief Andra Miron-Diaconescu about how Georgescu vanished into thin air and current election frontrunner and so-called 'MAGA' man George Simion. In this episode, we also look at another meeting between the EU and India in Brussels as part of a bid to agree on a free-trade deal, and where in Europe readers buy the most books online. Radio Schuman is hosted and produced by Maïa de la Baume, with journalist and production assistant Lauren Walker. Audio editing by Johan Breton. Music by Alexandre Jas.
Yahoo
02-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Euroskeptic leads Romania polls after previous vote annulled
A Euroskeptic nationalist who opposes military aid to Ukraine is the favorite to win the first round of Romania's weekend election. Though the country is small, its presidential poll has garnered global attention: The results of a prior vote were annulled after a relative unknown, Călin Georgescu, won following what officials said was Russian interference. Georgescu is barred from running this time, but frontrunner George Simion has promised to appoint him to a top position. The stakes extend beyond Bucharest's borders: Romania is set to host NATO's biggest military base in Europe by 2030 on the Black Sea coast, but analysts say a Simion win could put the country's commitment to the military alliance in doubt.
RTÉ News
02-05-2025
- Politics
- RTÉ News
Was it democratically fair to rerun Romania's presidential election?
On Sunday, Romanians will go to the polls for a second time in six months to elect a new president. This second election takes place amid political turmoil over a decision by Romania's constitutional court last December to annul the previous vote on the grounds of suspected campaign irregularities. But was it democratically fair to rerun the entire process? Central to the discussion is Călin Georgescu, the candidate who topped the first round of the previous election in November. Mr Georgescu was not a complete unknown within Romanian political circles. But neither was he a recognisable face to the vast majority of Romanian voters. The 62-year-old engineer and professor had been the country's representative to the United Nations Environment Programme between 1999 and 2012. He later joined the far-right Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR), a party that wants to unify Romania and Moldova, until he fell out with its leadership in 2022 after airing critical views about NATO. Polls at the start of November showed support for Mr Georgescu at less than 5%. Three weeks later, he won almost 23% of votes, topping the poll ahead of well-known and seasoned national politicians. It was a shock to Romania's political establishment. Mr Georgescu's populist, anti-establishment messages had resonated with many young male and rural voters, angry with inflation and the perceived failure of Romania's ruling centrist parties to tackle corruption. TikTok videos He shunned television debates and ran his campaign largely on TikTok, going viral in Romania and among the country's large diaspora. There was an element of grassroots campaigning too - religious communities, unions and alternative medicine groups mobilised to support him, according to Expert Forum, a think tank in Bucharest. In his TikTok videos, he emphasised the importance of maintaining Romanian sovereignty, criticised NATO and the European Union, and advocated for stopping military aid to Ukraine. He also praised Russian President Vladimir Putin's nationalist outlook. Polls tipped Mr Georgescu to win the decisive second-round vote. However, just two days before that vote, the country's constitutional court annulled the first round results, citing "numerous irregularities and violations of the electoral legislation", and ordered the entire electoral process to be rerun. After studying declassified documents issued by Romania's intelligence services, the court found that: "The free expression of the vote was violated by the fact that voters were misinformed through an electoral campaign in which one of the candidates was aggressively promoted, carried out by circumventing national electoral legislation and by abusing the algorithms of social media platforms". Romania's Supreme Council of National Defense also alleged that the election had been the target of hybrid Russian action. The court's verdict did not mention Mr Georgescu by name, but it was clear that he was the candidate in question. "Moreover, the candidate also received preferential treatment on social media platforms, which led to a distortion of the voters' expression of will," read the court's decision, indicating that TikTok's algorithm had preferenced accounts associated with Mr Georgescu's campaign given the volume of traffic they were already attracting. 'Spilt society' Mr Georgescu called the decision a "coup d'état". "It was probably necessary at the time, but it is very difficult to praise such a move," Professor Ioan Stanomir, a Romanian expert on constitutional law, told RTÉ News. The constitutional court, said Prof Stanomir, is "the ultimate guardian of constitutionalism in Romania and is also the guardian of presidential elections". "It is within the constitutional court's power to act upon these matters." Mr Georgescu's supporters have viewed the court's decision to rerun the election as an establishment coup against their candidate. Equally, the centre-right candidate Elena Lasconi, who placed second in the first round, criticised the court's decision. She had stood a good chance of winning the second round. A number of experts that spoke to RTÉ News believe the court's decision to annul and rerun the vote was badly communicated to the Romanian public at large. The court's decision "split the society", Alina Inayeh, a Romanian political analyst said. "Those who voted for Georgescu, of course, were frustrated that their vote was, as they see it, stolen," said Ms Inayeh, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund in Bucharest. To compound his supporters' frustrations, in March, Romania's central election authority barred Mr Georgescu from standing in the re-run vote on the grounds that his previous campaign was the reason for the constitutional court's annulment. At that stage, Mr Georgescu was polling at 41%, far ahead of other candidates. Given that he was very likely to win the rerun with an expanded support base, it could be construed that the constitutional court was ignoring the democratic will of four out of ten Romanian citizens. Mr Georgescu described the decision to bar him as "a blow to the heart of democracy worldwide" and said that "Romania is under tyranny". Yet, many aspects of Mr Georgescu's first electoral campaign raise suspicions about the authenticity of his candidacy and support the argument that the annulment was in the interests of Romanian democracy. Campaign funding Firstly, Mr Georgescu said his election campaign had zero budget. This claim is hard to believe given that there was an enormous amount of videos promoting his campaign messages on TikTok, not just on his official channel but on so-called fan accounts too. One video shows him competing in judo and horse riding, dressed in a traditional Romanian shirt. It appears to be professionally produced. A serving Romanian magistrate, told RTÉ News on condition of anonymity that Mr Georgescu could have been disqualified "for the simple reason that he declared €0 as election expenses". Not declaring election expenses violated electoral laws, the magistrate said. The source requested anonymity because they believed that Romania's Judicial Inspectorate is clamping down on judges who comment on political matters during the election campaign. Excluding Mr Georgescu from a second-round vote, the magistrate argued, would have provided "an easier way" than re-running the entire election. Secondly, Mr Georgescu's widespread campaign on TikTok cannot be explained as organic and needed a degree of organisation. Declassified documents from Romania's intelligence services stated that there were more than 25,000 TikTok accounts, mostly bots, associated with Mr Georgescu and most became active two weeks before the first-round vote. The document cites that an "extensive network" of TikTok influencers was used, through which Mr Georgescu promoted his electoral campaign. It alleges that the content on pro-Georgescu TikTok accounts was coordinated via Telegrams channels. Influencers were contacted by email and offered up to €1,000 to display Mr Georgescu's videos on their accounts, cites the declassified document. Many influencers did not mark the advertisements as paid content. The document also states that dozens of fake accounts were created, purporting to represent state bodies supporting Mr Georgescu. The 62-year-old candidate had gone viral, his TikTok posts amassing 62 million views before the first-round vote. From 10 to 16 November, one week before the vote, the Bulgarian-Romanian Observatory of Digital Media (BROD) found that there was a 223% increase in the number of his followers on TikTok. Hashtags featuring Mr Georgescu's name, such as #calingeorgescu, gained more than 73 million views during the same seven-day period, reflecting a highly strategic campaign, writes the analysis from BROD. Another report published last February by the French national security and defence service on the Romanian first-round vote also points to a highly-organised campaign involving TikTok influencers to promote Mr Georgescu. Thirdly, his videos were not labelled as political advertisements, which the court viewed as a form of voter manipulation. All of this undermines Mr Georgescu's claim that his campaign was run for free, and raises doubts around its transparency. In short, it supports the argument that the court's decision was taken in the interest of protecting Romanian democracy. "Georgescu leveraged TikTok's algorithmic design, exploiting far-right narratives that bypassed transparency rules for political advertising," said Mădălina Botan, a senior researcher who authored the BROD report on November's election results. Following Mr Georgescu's surprise victory, Romania's National Audiovisual Council asked the European Commission to investigate campaign irregularities on social media platforms that breached the EU's Digital Services Act. TikTok then removed 78 accounts operating from Romania, with more than 1,700 followers that attempted to promote Călin Georgescu's campaign and 5,500 pieces of election-related content in Romania that breached the platform's rules misinformation and hatred. But the damage was already done. By January the platform had removed what it called "a network" of more than 22,000 accounts promoting Mr Georgescu and the far-right AUR party, and has removed an additional 5,000 of these accounts since. The Venice Commission, the Council of Europe's advisory body on constitutional matters, of which Romania is a member, also studied the Romanian court's decision last January and concluded that the power of constitutional courts to annul elections should be "limited to exceptional circumstances". Mr Georgescu's first-round was an exceptional case, given that, within a three week period, he had surged from a very low support base to top the poll and become one of the globe's biggest trending subjects on a leading social media platform. But the Venice Commission report also stated that, when it comes to cancelling elections, the law must guarantee "safeguards such as impartiality". "Such decisions should precisely indicate the violations and the evidence, and they must not be based solely on classified intelligence (which may only be used as contextual information), as this would not guarantee the necessary transparency and verifiability." In Romania's case, the constitutional court took its decision to annul the election after viewing documents from the country's intelligence services. The secret documents have not been fully released nor has the court provided detailed evidence about the alleged violations beyond its ruling from 6 December 2024. In effect, the Venice Commission was indirectly raising doubts over the court's decision to annul the vote. Main beneficiary Romania is still reeling from the decision to annul the previous vote as its citizens go to the polls again. One beneficiary of the whole fiasco has been George Simion, the candidate for the far-right AUR, who is also the party's leader. Mr Simion is currently leading polls on 30% and experts believe a sizeable number of Mr Georgescu's voters are now supporting the far-right leader. Mr Simion could win a tight second-round vote on 18 May. For the re-run election, TikTok has hired an additional 120 cybersecurity and misinformation experts to work on its Romanian election taskforce. The tech platform has relaunched a dedicated Romanian 'Election Centre' on its app, providing voting dates, links to the website of Romania's Permanent Electoral Authority and information about platform's policies and media literacy tips. Romania's National Audiovisual Council has launched a public awareness campaign asking people to report suspicious election-related content published online and across traditional media. The body's acting president, Valentin-Alexandru Jucan, said the case of Romania's cancelled presidential election provided a good example of how state authorities and tech platforms should improve cooperation. "At the end of these elections, we should be able to propose to the European Commission new reforms on the Digital Services Act. "We saw how a platform can overturn everything. And the problem is not that someone is using the platform. The problem is when you are using the platform illegally," said Mr Jucan. Cancelling the vote and ordering the election to be rerun was a drastic move. But there were simply too many questions around the transparency of Mr Georgescu's campaign. Those suspicions justified the constitutional court to intervene. Unfortunately for Romanian voters this decision came very late and has damaged trust in public institutions. Cezara Grama, a Romanian lawyer with Bucharest-based think-tank Expert Forum, said the constitutional court's decision needs to be assessed "from a wider lens". Romania's Permanent Electoral Authority, she said, had failed to address the fact that Mr Georgescu had declared zero expenses and income for his political campaign when it was clear that he was running a campaign. If state institutions and tech platforms had acted earlier and more robustly to curb the reach of suspicion campaign activity, then the constitutional court's last-minute intervention might not have been needed.
