The Romanian elections — how did the West manage to win only in the second attempt

New presidential elections have been held in Romania to replace the vote that was interrupted at the end of the last year, due to partially unknown reasons. The move caused a scandal inside and outside the country, but the government easily accepted the Constitutional Court’s decision and scheduled a new round of elections for the dates of 4^th and 18^th of May.

In the first round, on the 4^th of May, the leader of the opposition nationalist Alliance for the Unification of Romanians, George Simion, won vith 40.96% of the votes with the mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan coming in second with 20.27% of the votes. Before the vote count began, exit polls gave Dan the victory with 54.1 — 54.9% according to various sources, againt 45.1 — 45.9% for Simion, which generally reflects the current picture of 53.6% for Simion and 46.4% for Dan.

A factor in the gradual decline of Simion’s result during the vote count was the fact that, according to the Permanent Electoral Authority, the results from densely populated areas were later received. Most of these areas were in urbanized areas, where Dan had an advantage.

The diaspora vote did not have a significant impact on the results of the vote. Despite the fact that Simion won overall abroad with 55.86%, the gap of 191.5 thousand did not help him win the elections. Thus, going in descending order of diasporas with a population over 150 thousand, Simion gained 66% in Italy, 68.3% in Germany, 58% in the United Kingdom, 67.9% in Spain and only 12% in Moldova.

The result from Moldova is mainly given to Maia Sandu’s support for Nicusor Dan, as well as to a number of statements made by Simion regarding the sovereignty of this country. Here we need to mention one of the moments from Simion’s electoral campaign, where he said (mostly as a joke) in an electoral video that his first internal trip will be to Chisinau, which is the capital of Moldova. From the beginning of his activist career, Simion advocated for the union between Romania and Moldova. From 2004, Simion organized many actions and manifestations under the slogan “Basarabia is Romania”.

Due to this kind of actions, Simion is banned from entering in Moldova. George Simion was first banned from entering Moldova in 2009 after participating in a unionist demonstration. In 2015 and 2018, Simion was again declared an undesirable person in the context of unionist actions and was once escorted to the border. The last extension of the ban was in 2024. In the context of the elections and due to the possibility to win the elections, his ban to enter Moldova was a subject of discussion and the judges from the Chisinau Court were about to re-analyze the ban on the 19^th of May, but the meeting was postponed until the 2^nd of July, according to the Moldovan media.

In our opinion, the key factors in Dan’s victory were the mobilization of the urban population and the flow of voters from the opponents in the first round who held similar ideological positions, speaking about Crin Antonescu and Elena Lasconi.

Crin Antonescu didn’t have a clear position regarding the second round of the elections and he even called this final “the horror final” in a post he wrote on Facebook, giving the impression that he doesn’t support any of the candidates. He criticized both candidates, saying that the victory of any of them will mean that Romania is going to have a “fake president”. He continued by calling Simion “a candidate protected by Georgescu” and Dan “a skillfully manipulated non-entity”, but also predicting a restart in the Romanian politics, in both cases.

In addition, the position of Simion, who was not able to soften his image to win over the wavering electorate, played a significant role. Also, presumably, the strengthening of anti-Trump sentiments in Europe played a role, while Simion identified himself as a supporter of Trump. Simion tried to show himself as a politician close to Trump and he even attended Trump’s inauguration in January. He attended the inauguration in his capacity as vice-president of the European Conservatives and Reformists Party (ECR) and as the leader of the AUR (Alliance for the Unity of Romanians) party. We need to mention that Simion was elected as the vice-president of the ECR party on the 14^th of January, at the political formation’s congress meeting in Brussels.

Talking about another candidate, Victor Ponta, who is a moderate critic of the European Union, particularly in the foreign politics field and who scored 13.4% in the first round, we need to mention that according to a sociological survey, his electorate did not give full support to Simion or to Dan, even if we are taking into account Ponta’s support for Simion. This led to the fact that in the second round, the fight of the two candidates was mostly for his supporters.

It’s worthy to mention that Victor Ponta created a poll on his official Facebook page, asking his supporters who will they vote for in the second round of the elections. More than 39 thousand people voted in that poll, 51% chose George Simion, 44% chose Nicusor Dan and 3% said that they will not vote at all.

During the voting, possible interference from France has been recorded. Pavel Durov, the co-founder of the Telegram platform posted on his channel a message where he accused the French intelligence services of asking him to silence the conservatives voices in Romania, in order to have an impact on the elections, in the favor of the pro-Western candidate. Durov assured the Telegram users that he refused to comply to this request, but simply the existence of this request is a proof of foreign interference in the Romanian elections.

In addition to these aspects, it’s worthy to mention that the Romanian Foreign Ministry reported interference from Russia, presumably preparing the ground for the cancellation of the elections in the event of an opposition candidate’s victory. At the same time, as a result, the Central Electoral Bureau did not identify any signs of critical violations that would have affected the voting results. At the same time, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs recorded 224 reports of possible violations, of which at least 163 were confirmed.

Despite the fact that George Simion had previously acknowledged his defeat by congratulating his opponent on his victory of Facebook, on the 20^th of May he posted on X asking the Constitutional Court to annul the election results due to foreign interference. Pavel Durov responded on X that he was ready to come to Romania and testify if this would benefit to the Romanian democracy.

First attempt: background of the cancelled elections

Romania’s Constitutional Court on the 28^th of November ordered a recount of the ballots and postponed the approval of the presidential elections’ results after two of the candidates, Cristian Terhes and Sebastian Popescu demanded that the results of the first round to be annulled. Terhes accused the Save Romania Union of conducting electoral propaganda during the vote, while Popescu claimed that Georgescu hid information about his significant campaign expenses on social media, especially TikTok.

On the same day, the Supreme Defense Council of Romania (CSAT) held a special meeting to examine possible risks to the national security of Romania arising from attacks on digital infrastructure during the elections, citing Russia as a possible culprit. The meeting noted that cyberattacks aimed at changing the voting results could have occurred during the election campaign. However, according to the Special Telecommunications Service of Romania, no cyberattacks were recorded during the first round of the presidential elections.

CSAT accused the social media platform TikTok of favoring Georgescu by not designating his profile as political and promoting his channel through recommendation, but the company has denied these allegations.

A recount of the results showed no deviations, as a result of which on the 2^nd of December, the Constitutional Court recognized the elections as valid.

On the 4^th of December, the Romanian President at that time, Klaus Iohannis, declassified some documents provided by the country’s intelligence services at a CSAT meeting. These materials were indicating that the social network TikTok informed the Romanian authorities about a network of accounts it had identified that were involved in manipulating the public opinion before the elections. Some of these accounts, according to TikTok, had ties to the Russian media.

Romania’s Foreign Intelligence Service also said that the country has been the target of Russia’s hybrid operations, including cyberattacks and leaks. Georgescu had officially declared zero campaign expenses, but the country’s intelligence services found that one of the TikTok accounts, owned by a Romanian citizen Bogdan Peschir, had financed the politician’s campaign, spending more than 1 million euros on it.

Bogdan Peschir is a Romanian businessman accused of corrupting voters in Calin Georgescu’s electoral campaign in November 2024. On the 21^st of March, he was remanded in custody for 30 days by the decision of the Court of Sector 5 in Bucharest. Initially, Peschir has been detained for 24 hours after the hearings at the IGPR headquarters, in the case regarding the financing of Calin Georgescu’s 2024 campaign. The prosecutors accused him of corrupting voters by electronic means in continuous form 265 times.

As per the investigation, it was told that Peschir offered almost 900.000 USD through gifts on TikTok and other amounts through Revolut (302.000 LEI and 18.000 USD) to 265 people, in order to influence their vote.

In November 2024, the Romanian Intelligence Service announced in a document declassified by the CSAT, that Bogdan Peschir financed Georgescu’s campaign with almost 400.000 euros. A month after, based on this report, the Constitutional Court canceled the first round of the presidential elections.

But, as a conclusion to this issue, the judges admitted the appeal filed by Bogdan Peschir and he was released from pre-trial detention. While the issue called Georgescu has temporarily left the public sphere, information about Peschir has also begun to dwindle.

The US and EU vision

On the 4^th of December, the US State Department expressed concern about the situation in Romania, emphasizing its importance as a strong NATO and EU ally and pointing out that any intervention aimed at changing Romania’s foreign policy course away from Western alliances could have serious negative consequences for security cooperation with the US.

In February 2025, JD Vance, the vice-president of the USA spoke at the Munchen Conference about this issue, summarizing the situation in a few words: “Romania canceled the elections based on flimsy  suspicions and enormous pressure from neighbors”. He mentioned that the biggest threat to Europe is not Russia, China or any other external actor, but the threat is from within.

Following JD Vance’s speech, Romania’s interim president at that time sent a message on his social networks saying that he can assure Bucharest’s partners and allies that Romania remains a reliable ally, firmly committed to an united EU, a stronger NATO and a solid transatlantic partnership.

After that, the Romanian Prime Minister also posted a message on X, mentioning that “Romania remains a defender of the democratic values that Europe shares with the US. All Romanian authorities are committed to organizing free and fair elections by empowering citizens and guaranteeing the freedom to vote”.

Even if Vance’s comments were not regarding these subjects, the Romanian politicians chose to ignore the facts and the concerns brought up by the American vice-president and continued to speak about the same things as before. None of them promptly responded to Vance’s allegations regarding the lack of evidence for cancelling the elections.

On the 5^th of December, the European Commission launched an investigation into the conduct of the elections in Romania. The TikTok’s Head of Authenticity and Transparency said that three election-related ad campaigns have been removed, including the one linked to the Russian agency Sputnik. The European Commission also ordered TikTok to preserve all evidence of possible risks to the elections. In addition, the European Commissioner Henna Virkkunen expressed concerns about foreign influence in Romania.

As a result of such a campaign, on the 6^th of December, the Constitutional Court announced the cancellation of the results of the first round of the presidential elections.

Reasons for the cancellation

In the first round last year, the right-wing, EU-skeptic independent candidate Calin Georgescu won 22.94% of the votes. George Simion also participated and got 13.86% of the votes and then he declared his full support for Georgescu in the second round. In addition, the rival of the right-wing candidate, Elena Lasconi, also a fairly radical figure, expected to win the elections, even if she portrayed herself as an “anti-system candidate”.

It is noted that the Constitutional Court’s decision on the first round could have been dictated by political reasons. Thus, a widely distributed report by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service notes that, according to their data, the decision of the Romanian prosecutor’s office to bring charges against the right-wing candidate Georgescu was backed by the leadership of the EU supranational bodies, including Ursula von der Leyen, who previously played a key role in invalidating the results of the first round of the Romanian presidential elections at the end of 2024, and also demanded that the current authorities in Bucharest not allow Georgescu to participate in the repeat vote in May. It was told that she threatened to restrict Romania’s access to EU funds if the representative of the non-systemic forces continues to participate in election campaign.

Even if the Constitutional Court of Romania did not pay attention to this detail, we need to mention that Alfred Simonis, the president of the Timis Country Council, declared in a video posted on TikTok that some of the members of the Social-Democrat Party (PSD) voted for George Simion in the first round of the cancelled elections, and not for their own candidate, Marcel Ciolacu, who was the prime-minister of Romania at that time.

In that video, Alfred Simonis told Marcel Ciolacu: “Do you remember when you told the party not to give the votes to Simion because we are not sure that he will enter the second round? Know that we all gave him votes”.

More than that, Catalin Drula from the Union Save Romania (USR) also accused the Social-Democrat Party’s members of giving votes to George Simion instead of their own candidate. He declared that they have lied about the elections and he mentioned that he doesn’t know if there was any Russian interference, but that he is knows that PSD gave 200.000 votes to Simion.

Second attempt – don’t call it democracy, call it convenience

In the first round of the presidential elections on the 4^th of May, the leader of the opposition nationalist Alliance for the Unification of Romanians, George Simion, won 40.96% of the votes. The mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, came second with 20.27% of the votes.

Nicusor Dan was leading in the second round of the presidential elections in Romania, according to exit polls conducted by the Center for Urban and Regional Sociology (CURS) and the Avangarde Social and Behavioural Research Group.

Vote counting

According to the live data from hotnews.ro, citing data from the Permanent Electoral Authority of Romania, we had the following results:

According to the analysis of the ratio of the candidates’ results during the vote counting process, a tendency of a gradual decrease in Simion’s points is visible. He was leading for approximately 30% of the votes counted in the segment. However, when approaching 50%, he gives up the lead.

Thus, Dan is ahead of at the stage of 46.02% of the votes counted.

After that, Simion never got past Dan until the end of the vote count and ultimately lost by 7.2%.

Presumably, the data were processed in the order they entered in the system. Given this, one of the reasons for George Simion’s initial advantage in the vote count was that the data from densely populated areas began to arrive later.

Thus, according to AEP data, results from the third most populated city of Iasi, where Dan gained an advantage of 69 thousand votes began to enter the system at 21:10. From Cluj, where Dan gained an advantage of 172 thousand votes, at 21:08. It is noteworthy that the largest cities in Romania are located in the above regions.

At the same time, a tendency is noted that, on average, larger electoral units within districts sent data later. In particular, the data from Bucharest are indicative.

We see a similar picture for the cities of Iasi and Cluj, where larger areas sent the data later.

This confirms the conclusion that Simion’s initial advantage was lost when data began to come in from the urban-majority districts.

Distribution of the votes in diaspora

According to AEP, the main component of the diaspora abroad voted for Simion, who received a total of 55.86%, overtaking Dan by 191.5 thousand votes.

At the same time, Simion retained the lead, since he was voted for in countries with large diasporas. Thus, going in descending order of diasporas with a population over 150 thousand, he gained 66% in Italy, 68.3% in Germany, 58% in the United Kingdom, 67.9% in Spain and 12% in Moldova.

The anomalous result in Moldova is due to the fact that the Moldovan authorities actually called for voting for Dan so that he would “prevent Romania from leaving the EU or turning the country into an anti-European state”. Maia Sandu herself said that she will vote for him in Tirana after participating in the summit of the European Political Community. In addition, Simion accused his opponent of organizing the transportation of voters to polling stations in buses in Moldova.

It’s a bit difficult to understand Maia Sandu’s reasons for supporting different candidates, as if we look at her preference for the first elections in Romania, held in 2024, we can see that she has fully supported Elena Lasconi, who was the leader of the USR party at that time. The president of Moldova even came to Romania to show her support for her favorite candidate before the cancellation of the second tour.

After the elections have been cancelled, Maia Sandu’s party, the Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) announced its support for Crin Antonescu, even if the president’s favorite candidate from the previous elections was in the race. Maia Sandu changed her mind and decided to support the candidate supported by the Romanian government coalition. In the second round of the elections, in a predictable way, the president of Moldova chose to support Nicusor Dan and encouraged the Romanian citizens of Moldova to do the same.

It’s worth noting that Moldova did show a significant result, including in comparation with the first round. Thus, more than 157 thousand people voted in the second round, while in the first round about 88 thousand. At the same time, if Simion increased his support by approximately 2 thousand, then his opponent by 90 thousand.

Dan noted the support from Moldova, especially thanking Emmanuel Macron and Maia Sandu. At the same time, the advantage of 119 thousand in Moldova did not give a significant impact, taking into account the voting in other countries with large diasporas.

Data from Romania

Dan’s support among the urban population is clearly demonstrated by comparing the regions with the largest cities and the regions where the other candidate won.

Thus, it is noted that Simion did not win in any of the regions in which there is a city with a population of more than 250 thousand.

Mobilization of the urban population

One of the key reasons was the mobilization of the urban population, the majority of whom voted for Dan. Thus, in the first round, the ratio was 5.7 million from urbanized areas against 3.8 in rural areas in Romania and also 973 thousand abroad.

In the second round, a total of 7.3 million city residents and 4.3 million rural residents voted.

Transfer of votes from other candidates

In the first round, in addition to the two winners, other major candidates can be identified: Crin Antonescu (20.07%), Victor Ponta (13.4%) and Elena Lasconi (2.68%), who actually took the second place in the first round of last year’s elections.

Although the Social Democrats and the candidate that they supported, Crin Antonescu, refrained from supporting Dan, the pro-European National Liberal Party and the Hungarian minority organizations that supported Antonescu in the first round, decided to openly support Dan.

It is worth knowing that the Hungarians are the second largest ethnic group in Romania. At the same time, they are sufficiently isolated to strive for a partial restoration of the autonomy lost as a result of the administrative-territorial reform back in 1968. In these conditions, Simion’s nationalist aspirations led to Dan’s confident victory in the Hungarian regions.

Moreover, the data of sociological surveys before the elections showed that the majority of their electorate would rather vote for Dan than for Simion. Thus, according to the sociological survey Verifield, 57.3% of Antonescu’s electorate would rather vote for Dan and only 18.8% for Simion. This trend is visible in those few regions where Antonescu won a majority in the first round and where the votes went later to Dan.

Victor Ponta relied rather on the conservative electorate, more inclined to a possible shift to the right. At the same time, the data of the same poll showed that despite significant uncertainty, the advantage within this target group remained with Dan. Ponta himself ultimately spoke out in support of Simion.

We need to mention that the relationship between Simion and Ponta had some ups and downs. Just a month before the elections, in April 2025, a serious exchange of words between them took place on social media. The issue started after the ex-prime-minister, Ponta, posted a video on his Facebook page where he directly addressed to Simion, inviting him to an open discussion. Victor Ponta started his post saying that “I talk to you as your older brother” and invited him to have a debate and to explain to the Romanian people what they can do together for them.

Simion answered to Ponta’s appeal and commented on his post, accusing him of working with Coldea and Maior (two important figures from the Romanian Security Services, that were part of a big scandal in the last months). Victor Ponta then accused Simion of hiding behind a journalist called Anca Alexandrescu. After some other comments, the post has been deleted, but the Romanian mass-media published the screenshots with the discussion between the two politicians.

The tensions between the two candidates exploded after Simion publicly accused Ponta of having benefited from lobbying services in the US, with the aim of creating the impression of support from Washington. In a statement to digi24.ro, Simion said that “Victor Ponta paid 7 million euros for lobbying in the US, through third countries, to make it seem like he was supported by the Trump administration”. The former prime-minister rejected the accusations and responded with a direct attack on Simion, saying that he is lying and accusing him of lying to the people in the electoral campaign. More, he accused Simion of being a “hooligan”.

But somehow after all these tensions, Victor Ponta decided to support Simion in the second round and the argument was that he can not support Nicusor Dan because he is doubting that Dan is having his own plan and he rather believes that he will be following the plan of the Soros network in Romania.

However, the AUR party ruled out any possibility of collaborating with Ponta and the statement came from the vice-president of the party, Marius Lulea, who called Ponta “a politican traitor, an unprincipled importor, concerned only with his own advantages”.

If we are talking about Elena Lasconi, in spite the fact that she was ideologically close to Dan, she refused to withdraw her candidacy from the elections, but her party, the Union for the Rescue of Romania chose to stop supporting her, giving preference to Dan. The move that has been made by USR, which withdrew its political support for Elena Lasoni, is unprecedented. The decision of the National Bureau to withdraw the support for the leader of the party, Elena Lasconi, was taken after a vote that took place in an informal Political Committee of USR, with a majority of 75% in support of Nicusor Dan.

The reason why USR decided to support Nicusor Dan was, as mentioned by the party’s vice-president at that time Dominic Fritz, that Elena Lasconi didn’t have any chance to enter the second round. His words were based on a poll commissioned by USR that showed Elena Lasconi in the fifth place, with 4.1% of the votes. The ranking in the poll was led by George Simion, followed by Victor Ponta and, as mentioned by some USR members, they were afraid of a final between two nationalists and this led to the decision to support a candidate that had chances to be on the second place and to enter in the second tour.

 However, after the defeat in the first round, Lasconi resigned as the chief of the party and could not prevent the new leadership of the party from actively supporting Dan.

Thus, the data of the sociological survey after the first round showed that the majority of the electorate one way or another flowed to Dan and the fight was largely for the undecided electorate of Victor Ponta. It can also be noted that despite the data of the sociological survey, Ponta’s support had an impact in the regions where he played a significant role and Simion won. This is explained by the fact that in the first round, Simion drew some of the conservative rural votes away from Ponta, which were partially returned to him in the second round.

Positioning of George Simion

One of the reasons for the defeat may be Simion’s positioning. Despite his attempts to present himself as a more moderate candidate in interviews, downplaying his opposition to the EU, this did not fully succeed. On the other hand, he had a well-established image as a radical right-wing politician, speaking from a nationalist position against the EU. This was partly due to his external aspirations, in particular his refusal to support Ukraine in opposition to the postulated position of the EU.

The latter, despite the contradiction with the EU, is not a significant mistake, given that the level of support for aid to Ukraine in Romania according to the Eurobarometer for 2024 is low. Thus, only 22% are ready to provide aid to refugees, 14% support the actions of the EU on Ukraine and 13% are ready to support the EU candidate status for Ukraine.

On the other hand, he is fully affiliated with Calin Georgescu, including promising him a leadership position in case of victory, which allowed him to attract his electorate, but to a large extent turned the rest of society against him.

In addition, George Simion actively supported Trump, which could work against him, given the dominance of anti-Trump sentiments in Romania. Thus, according to a survey by the Geopolitical Research Group, 46% of the Romanian population say that Trump makes the world less safe, against 18% who think that he doesn’t. in addition, 37% of the respondents consider the US president an enemy of Europe, while only 23% consider him a friend.

It is also worth noting that on the 3^rd of May, the Trump administration canceled the visa-free entry for 90 days regime with Romania concluded under the Biden administration. The decision of the Biden’s administration was criticized in a statement and the cited reason was “security concerns”.

An interesting information regarding the exclusion of Romania from the Visa Waiver program was mentioned in a Trump administration document and it seems like this move was impacted by the cancellation of the December elections, as mentioned by adevarul.ro.

Possible violations during elections

The second round of the presidential elections in Romania took place without any major incidents, as reported by the Central Electoral Bureau (BEC). The Romanian Interior Ministry recorded 224 reports of possible violations, of which at least 163 were confirmed. The agency’s spokesperson noted on the 18^th of May that more than 40 complains were related to photographing or filming the ballot papers, which is prohibited by the Romanian law. Another 35 reports concerned the illegal continuation of election campaigning on election day.

            The most remarkable violation was made by the interim-president of the USR party, Dominic Fritz, the mayor of the city of Timisoara, who is not even a Romanian citizen. He violated the electoral law that prohibits propaganda after the end of the campaign, after posting a message in favor of Nicusor Dan on Facebook. He wrote that the first polling station in closed, the one in the New Zealand, and that Nicusor Dan earner 88% of the votes there.

George Simion also had a contact with the police in the voting day, when he went to the polling station with his wife and with Calin Georgescu, and they started talking to the journalists inside the polling station and the president of the polling station requested to the police to ask these people to leave the station to the designated place for communication with the press, in order to preserve the normal course of voting.

Simion’s accusations

In addition, Simion accused Dan of violating the pre-election silence and he made unsubstantiated accusations of using “dead souls” in the elections. It is worth noting that AUR accused the Moldovan authorities of organizing the transportation of voters to polling stations in buses in Moldova. As evidence, videos were distributed in which a line of buses is parked next to a polling station, but no full evidence of violations was presented. The video also shows a yellow bus belonging to the Moldovan Ministry of Education.

Later, the Moldovan Education Minister Dan Perciun denied the organized transportation, claiming that “several hundred students from all over the country came to Chisinau to visit universities, including the Technical University of Moldova”, where two polling stations for the second round of the presidential elections in Romania were also organized and also attached a document with a schedule of student visits of 17^th of May.

Despite the fact that George Simion had previously acknowledged his defeat by congratulating his opponent on his victory on Facebook, on the 20^th of May he made a post on X asking the Constitutional Court to annul the election results due to foreign interference. At the same time, Pavel Durov responded to Simion on X that he was ready to come to Romania and testify if this would help the Romanian democracy.

France

Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov posted a message on his channel, in the day of the Romanian elections, where he said that he received a request from the authorities of a Western European country to block the channels of Romanian conservatives ahead of the presidential elections, but refused to comply with it. The country in question is most probably France, as Durov added a baguette emoji to the message.

Durov accused the head of the French secret services, Nicolas Lerner, of trying to influence the elections in Romania. According to him, Lerner would have asked him to block the Romanian conservative channels in order to limit the influence of Simion and his party. Durov posted a message on his Telegram channel where he informed everyone regarding this event and also the Romanian people who have a Telegram account received private messages from Telegram, with the same content.

Durov also highlighted an interesting overlap of events, showing that the statement of the French MEP Valerie Hayer about his support for the pro-Western candidate for the presidential elections in Romania, Nicusor Dan, coincided with the visit to this country of the head of the French secret services, reports Gazeta.ru.

“Nicholas Lerner, the head of France’s Foreign Intelligence Service, who asked me to silence, on Telegram, conservative voices in Romania before the elections… visited Romania just two days before the vote”, Durov said in a post on X.

The businessman also pointed out that Lerner visited the capital of Romania a few days after Hayer announced his support for Nicusor Dan. These clarifications came after Durov announced that he is ready to testify about a possible foreign interference in the presidential elections in Romania.

The representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, said that the arrest of Durov by the French authorities was not related, as it has been said, to internal problems of regulating the messaging services, but to an attempt to influence the upcoming elections in Romania.

In a post on her Telegram page, Zakharova stressed that the French President Macron was thus trying to ensure the victory of the pro-Western candidate in Romania, understanding that he will not be able to win fairly.

Subsequently, the French Foreign Ministry issued a denial of this information on the X platform: “Completely unfounded accusations against France that it is allegedly interfering in the presidential elections in Romania are being spread on Telegram and X. France categorically rejects these accusations and calls on everyone to show responsibility and respect for Romanian democracy”.

To prove or to suspect the French interference in the elections in Romania, we can take a look at the events prior to the elections. On the 5^th of February, in France a document regarding a TikTok campaign meant to interfere in the Romanian elections has been published.  This was an important factor for the mass media that caused hours of propaganda regarding this subject.

On the 10^th of February, the ex-president of Romania that continued to stay in his position without any constitutional base, resigned. 8 days later, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, had an interview where he spoke regarding the Russian interference in Europe, mentioning Romania and the Romanian elections as a direct example.

A day later, the new interim president, Ilie Bolojan, made his first foreign trip, to Paris and he was welcomed by Macron. After that, on the 21^st of February, in a discussion about Romania, Bolojan had a verbal altercation with the American vice-president Vance, saying that he was not shocked by the Romanian Constitutional Court’s decision to cancel the elections, mentioning that he was actually shocked by the Russian interference. Here we need to mention that the Russian interference in the Romanian elections has not been proved at all.

Regarding this subject, the American president said that the proofs offered by the security services in Romania have not been enough and that they were more like impressions than real proofs.

Another important event was the visit of the French ambassador to the Romanian Constitutional Court of the 5^th of March, where, according to the Romanian mass media, they discussed about the close cooperation between the two countries in the legal and constitutional field. Some days later, on the 11^th of March, the Constitutional Court made the decision that Calin Georgescu, the winner of the first tour of the December elections, can not become a candidate to the new elections. Two days before, Dacian Ciolos, an ex-prime-minister of Romania who has also been the leader of RENEW (Macron’s group from the European Parliament) became part of Bolojan’s team.

Just one day before, the French ambassador to Bucharest thanked Bolojan on the X platform for a supposed success in signing some bilateral documents, about which the Romanian people knew nothing. As the Presidential Administration did not make this public, the Romanian people knew nothing about this.

Also, just one day before the the official banning of Georgescu’s candidature, we found out that Nicusor Dan (the future winner of the elections) officially asked the interim-president Bolojan to make sure that there will be no interference in the new elections. We know that the president is unable to guarantee this, as it’s not based on his attributions. The Presidential Administration didn’t speak a word about this meeting. We know, based on his own words, that Nicusor Dan had a lot of trips to France, where he has studied.

Possible cancellation of elections

The Romanian Foreign Ministry allegedly prepared the ground for the cancellation of the vote in the event of the victory of the opposition candidate. Thus, the representative of the Romanian Foreign Ministry, Andrei Cernea, claimed in X that signs of “Russian interference” in the holding of the second round of the presidential elections in the country were recorded.

At the same time, the situation was radically different from last year. Thus, this year the polls did not give a clear preference to one candidate or another. In addition, Dan’s image was suitable for aggregating the votes of those who had not decided, while Simion could not completely get rid of the image of a radical politician. Thus, this action was only a hedge against an unfavorable outcome.

We must also note that the main discrediting campaign began after the unsatisfactory results of the first round had been received, which, according to the survey, could be repeated in the second.

Still, how did they manage to win?

Before the elections, there was a visible increase in the number of alarming news in the Romanian mass-media, in which the TV presenters and their guests attempted to convince the people that the economic situation in the country will worsen and that the foreign investors will leave Romania in the event of a victory of George Simion. In some TV shows they spoke for hours regarding the risk of leaving the EU and NATO, associating this risk only with the victory of Simion, even if he has never talked about this and even made some declarations where he showed his support for a powerful European Union.

It was a great mobilization of the internet websites also. For example, declic.ro, one of the largest online activism communities in Romania, created an entire elections guide, with step-by-step conversation guides about how to urge acquaintances to vote for ”the pro-European” candidate. They suggested to the people even how to start a conversation, how to listen to the interlocutor’s words, how not to interrupt him/her, how to express emotions and concerns and, in the end, how to convince him to go to vote for the candidate that cares about Romania’s position in the EU, referring to Nicusor Dan.

Another website that got involved in this subject is dexonline, the transposition on the internet of dictionaries of the Romanian language, created by volunteers in order to help people look for words in an online dictionary. This website posted a message with direct political connotations, in the middle of the electoral campaign. The users of the site were greeted with the question “Will you vote for Nicusor Dan?” and they had two options: “yes” or “no”. For the ones that chose “no”, the website had another message: “oops! Wouldn’t you like to think a little more?”. If the user wanted to be able to actually look for a word in the dictionary, he needed to click on the next message, “OK, you’re right, I’ll think about it”. Otherwise, the website was not usable.

AUR party issued a press release requesting the immediate implementation of a decision that ascertains the illegal electoral nature of the context displayed on the dexonline website. After that, the Electoral Bureau of District 5 decided the removal by the owner of the dexonline domain of the political material.

But the website didn’t stop publishing political materials and, after that, the users who were trying to use the website got another message “it remains as we have talked, okay?”.

The last controversial message posted by the same website was a question that was supposed to make the users think that Simion is a pro-Russian candidate. Before being allowed to use the website, the users were asked “Do you support Europe?” and the options were “sure” and “niet” (the Russian word for no). Choosing the first option, the user was able to normally use the website, but after choosing the second option, the interface of the website was changing into a pseudo-Russian version, that was actually just the rewrite of the Romanian words in Cyrillic alphabet.

As a conclusion, we can easily see how the democracy is working in Romania. When an incommode candidate managed to get into the presidential race and, more important, managed to win the first tour, a story about foreign interference has been quickly created, without paying too much attention to the credibility of that story, but when a powerful figure as Pavel Durov sends a signal of a foreign interference and declares it readiness to prove his words, the moment is not taken into account by the capable institutions.

The victory of the candidate supported by the main parties and by the minorities was not a surprise, given the fact that the mass-media also put a lot of effort in order to help him win. His image was carefully improved by the mainstream mass-media and he with their help he managed to get votes from people from all over the country, after many people have been led to believe that if his rival will win, the country will leave the EU and NATO and will be isolated.

Even Simion’s efforts to show that Romania will not be isolated if he will win and his official visits in Poland and Italy were not enough to make people trust him and believe that he is now more than the political activist that he was years ago.

The material reflects the author’s personal position, which may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial board.